1,842 Quotes by Swami Vivekananda

Ordinary love is mere animal attraction. Otherwise why is the distinction between the sexes? If one kneels before an image, it is dreadful idolatry; but if one kneels before husband or wife, it is quite permissible!

Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.

Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.

Always discriminate-your body, your house, the people and the world are all absolutely unreal like a dream. Always think that the body is only an inert instrument. And the Atman within is your real nature.

I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything they really deserve.

External practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity.

Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his centre of self-consciousness.

Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. . . . Our thoughts, our words, and deeds are the threads of the net which we throw around ourselves.

Why is it that we three hundred and thirty millions of people have been ruled for the last one thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners who chose to walk over our prostrate bodies? Because they had faith in themselves and we had not.