Swami Vivekananda Quotes

We are like the caterpillar which takes the thread out of his own body and of that makes the cocoon, and behold, he is caught.

Stand alone! See the glory of your own soul, and see that you will have to work.

Woman has suffered for eons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite perseverance.

If you [can realise Brahman] by standing on your head, or on one foot, or by worshipping five thousand gods with three heads each — welcome to it! ... Do it any way you can! Nobody has any right to say anything. Therefore, Krishna says, if your method is better and higher, you have no business to say that another man’s method is bad, however wicked you may think it.

Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies.

It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

First, believe in the world—that there is meaning behind everything.

Realisation is real religion, all the rest is only preparation — hearing lectures, or reading books, or reasoning is merely preparing the ground; it is not religion.

The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present.

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time.

All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.

Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ...but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you,
none can make you spiritual.
There is no other teacher but your own soul.

What is it that is whirling the mind? Imagination, creative activity. Stop creation and you know the truth. All power of creation must stop, and then you know the truth at once.

Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future.