1,842 Quotes by Swami Vivekananda

For the next fifty years this alone shall be our keynote - this, our great Mother India. Let all other vain gods disappear for the time from our minds. This is the only god that is awake, our own race - "everywhere his hands, everywhere his feet, everywhere his ears, he covers everything." All other gods are sleeping. What vain gods shall we go after and yet cannot worship the god that we see all round us, the Virât? When we have worshiped this, we shall be able to worship all other gods.

There have been two lines of progress in this world-political and religious. In the former the Greeks are everything, the modern political institutions being only the development of the Grecian; in the latter the Hindus are everything.

This doctrine of prenatal influence is now slowly being recognized, and science as well as religion calls out: 'Keep yourself holy, and pure.' So deeply has this been recognized in India, that there we even speak of adultery in marriage, except when marriage is consummated in prayer.

The devil comes in many guises-anger in the form of justice-passion in the form of duty. When it first comes, the man knows and then he forgets. Just as your pleaders' conscience; at first they know it is all Badmashi (roguery), then it is duty to their clients; at last they get hardened.

Everything that you do under compulsion goes to build up attachment.

The Heart and core of everything here is good, that whatever may be the surface waves, deep down and underlying everything, there is an infinite basis of Goodness and Love.

Just as the body has its progress and decadence, so also has the mind, and, therefore, the mind is not the soul, because the soul can neither decay nor degenerate.

Everything, both mental and physical, is rigidly bound by the law of causation.

You must be fearless. It is the coward who fears and defends himself