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Swami Vivekananda Quotes (1863-1902)
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About Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902) was a teacher of Vedanta philosophy, and one of the most famous and influential spiritual leaders of Hinduism.
Best Swami Vivekananda Quotes
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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Swami Vivekananda quotes.
“Unselfishness is God.”
“If superstition enters, the brain is gone.”
“A perfect life is a contradiction in terms.”
“There cannot be friendship without equality.”
“Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be.”
“Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.”
“The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence.”
“Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.”
“That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.”
“First, believe in the world—that there is meaning behind everything.”
“Be a hero. Always say, "I have no fear." Tell this to everyone—"Have no fear."”
“The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!”
Swami Vivekananda Quotes by Topic
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Swami Vivekananda on Sanskrit 9 quotes
View all 9 quotes on Sanskrit →Swami Vivekananda on Hanuman 9 quotes
“If you be very generous, you may think that like the great devotee, Hanuman.”
Swami Vivekananda on Starvation 9 quotes
“They have sucked out blood, they have carried away with them millions of our money, while our people have starved.”
Swami Vivekananda on Radha 7 quotes
“The madness of Love—God intoxicated man The allegory of Radha misunderstood The restriction more increase— Lust is the death of love Self is the death of love individual to general.”
Swami Vivekananda on Famine in India 6 quotes
“They have sucked out blood, they have carried away with them millions of our money, while our people have starved.”
Swami Vivekananda on Islam and violence 6 quotes
“Mohammedans talk of universal brotherhood, but what comes out of that in reality? Why, anybody who is not a Mohammedan will not be admitted into the brotherhood: he will more likely have his throat cut.”
Swami Vivekananda on Bhakti 5 quotes
“Bhakti Yoga is described by Swami Vivekananda as the path of systematized devotion for the attainment of union with the Absolute.”
Swami Vivekananda on Karma 5 quotes
“Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma.”
Swami Vivekananda on Charvaka 5 quotes
“Chârvâkas, a very ancient sect in India, were rank materialists. They have died out now, and most of their books are lost. They claimed that the soul, being the product of the body and its forces, died with it; that there was no proof of its further existence. They denied inferential knowledge accepting only perception by the senses.”
Swami Vivekananda on Aryan 4 quotes
View all 4 quotes on Aryan →Swami Vivekananda on Manusmriti 4 quotes
“A child materially born is not an Aryan; the child born in spirituality is an Aryan.”
Swami Vivekananda on Yoga 4 quotes
“As every science has its methods, so has every religion. The methods of attaining the end of religion are called Yoga by us, and the different forms of Yoga that we teach are adapted to the different natures and temperaments of men.”
What Swami Vivekananda Said About Others
Discover personal opinions Swami Vivekananda shared regarding contemporaries.
Swami Vivekananda on Shakti 4 quotes
“There was the other idea in the old Vedic hymn to the Goddess: ‘I am the light. I am the light of the sun and moon; I am the air which animates all beings.’ This is the germ which afterwards develops into Mother-worship. By Mother-worship is not meant difference between father and mother. The first idea connoted by it is that of energy—I am the power that is in all beings.”
Swami Vivekananda on Paul Deussen 3 quotes
“If Max Müller is thus the old pioneer of the new movement, Deussen is certainly one of its younger advance-guard.”
Swami Vivekananda on Women in Hinduism 2 quotes
“The next idea of the Aryans is the freedom of women. It is in the Aryan literature that we find women in ancient times taking the same share as men, and in no other literature of the world.”
Swami Vivekananda on Women in India 2 quotes
“To the women of this country... I would say exactly what I say to the men. Believe in India and in our Indian faith. Be strong and hopeful and unashamed, and remember that with something to take, Hindus have immeasurably more to give than any other people in the world.”
Swami Vivekananda on Mandodari 2 quotes
“And the worthy daughters of those far-famed ladies [Ahalyâ, Târâ, Mandodari, Kunti, and Draupadi] of the Paurânika age, whose names we are to repeat every morning—they can no longer marry more than one husband at a time, even if they want to, and so they turn unchaste.”
Swami Vivekananda on Women
Swami Vivekananda on Tara (Ramayana)
“And the worthy daughters of those far-famed ladies [Ahalyâ, Târâ, Mandodari, Kunti, and [Draupadi] of the Paurânika age, whose names we are to repeat every morning—they can no longer marry more than one husband at a time, even if they want to, and so they turn unchaste.”
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Swami Vivekananda on Max Müller
“Max Müller is a Vedantist of Vedantists. He has, indeed, caught the real soul of the melody of the Vedanta, in the midst of all its settings of harmonies and discords — the one light that lightens the sects and creeds of the world, the Vedanta, the one principle of which all religions are only applications.”
Swami Vivekananda on Savitri
“Ideal characters must always be presented before the view of the girls to imbue them with a devotion to lofty principles of selflessness. The noble examples of Sita, Savitri, Damayanti, Lilavati, Khana, and Mirâ should be brought home to their minds and they should be inspired to mould their own lives in the light of these.”
Swami Vivekananda on Female education
“In these modern days there is a greater impetus towards higher education on the European lines, and the trend of opinion is strong towards women getting this higher education. Of course, there are some people in India who do not want it, but those who do want it carried the day. It is a strange fact that Oxford and Cambridge are closed to women today, so are Harvard and Yale; but Calcutta University opened its doors to women more than twenty years ago.”
Swami Vivekananda on Meera Bai
“Love is something absolutely unselfish, that which has no thought beyond the glorification and adoration of the object upon which our affections are bestowed. It is a quality which bows down and worships and asks nothing in return. Merely to love is the sole request that true love has to ask. It is said of a Hindu saint (Mirabai) that when she was married, she said to her husband, the king, that she was already married. To whom?" asked the king. To God," was the reply.”
Swami Vivekananda on Genocide of indigenous peoples
“And may I ask you, Europeans, what country you have ever raised to better conditions? Wherever you have found weaker races, you have exterminated them by the roots, as it were. You have settled on their lands, and they are gone for ever. What is the history of your America, your Australia, and New Zealand, your Pacific islands and South Africa? Where are those aboriginal races there today? They are all exterminated, you have killed them outright, as if they were wild beasts. It is only where you have not the power to do so, and there only, that other nations are still alive.”
Swami Vivekananda on English people
“No one ever landed on English soil with more hatred in his heart for a race than I did for the English, and on this platform are present English friends who can bear witness to the fact; but the more I lived among them and saw how the machine was working - the English national life - and mixed with them, I found where the heartbeat of the nation was, and the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do now. You have to see what is going on there, and you have to mix with them. As the philosophy, our national philosophy of the Vedanta, has summarised all misfortune, all misery, as coming from that one cause, ignorance, herein also we must understand that the difficulties that arise between us and the English people are mostly due to that ignorance; we do not know them, they do not know us.”
Swami Vivekananda on Mothers
“The child must be prayed for. Those children that come with curses, that slip into the world, just in a moment of inadvertence, because that could not be prevented - what can we expect of such progeny? Mothers of America, think of that! Think in the heart of your hearts, are you ready to be women? Not any question of race or country, or that false sentiment of national pride. Who dares to be proud in this mortal life of ours, in this world of woes and miseries? What are we before this infinite force of God? But I ask you the question tonight: Do you all pray for the children to come? Are you thankful to be mothers, or not? Do you think that you are sanctified by motherhood, or not? Ask that of your minds. If you do not, your marriage is a lie, your womanhood is false, your education is superstition, and your children, if they come without prayer, will prove a curse to humanity.”
Swami Vivekananda on Muhammad
“But with all that, Mohammed spoke some wonderful truths. If you read the Koran, you find the most wonderful truths mixed with superstitions. How will you explain it? That man was inspired, no doubt, but that inspiration was, as it were, stumbled upon. He was not a trained Yogi, and did not know the reason of what he was doing. Think of the good Mohammed did to the world, and think of the great evil that has been done through his fanaticism! Think of the millions massacred through his teachings, mothers bereft of their children, children made orphans, whole countries destroyed, millions upon millions of people killed! (...) So we see this danger by studying the lives of great teachers like Mohammad and others. Yet we find, at the same time, that they were all inspired. Whenever a prophet got into the superconscious state by heightening his emotional nature, he brought away from it not only some truths, but some fanaticism also, some superstition which injured the world as much as the greatness of the teaching helped.”
Quotes About Swami Vivekananda
Gain deeper perspective through quotes about Swami Vivekananda from others.
Sri Aurobindo on Swami Vivekananda
“Vivekananda was a soul of puissance if ever there was one, a very lion among men, but the definite work he has left behind is quite incommensurate with our impression of his creative might and energy. We perceive his influence still working gigantically, we know not well how, we know not well where, in something that is not yet formed, something leonine, grand, intuitive, upheaving that has entered the soul of India and we say, "Behold, Vivekananda still lives in the soul of his Mother and in the souls of her children."”
Sister Nivedita on Swami Vivekananda
“Swami Vivekananda's close associate Sister Nivedita testifies that Swamiji was a great devotee of the Buddha: 'Again and again he would return upon the note of perfect rationality in his hero. Buddha was to him not only the greatest of Aryans but also 'the one absolutely sane man' that the world had ever seen. How he had refused worship! (...) How vast had been the freedom and humility of the Blessed One! (...) He alone was able to free religion entirely from the argument of the supernatural, and yet make it as binding in its force, and as living in its appeal, as it had ever been." Sister Nivedita also relates that Swamiji's first act after taking Sannyas was to "hurry to Bodh Gaya, and sit under the great tree"; and that his last journey, too, had taken him to Bodh Gaya.”
Anantanand Rambachan on Swami Vivekananda 2 quotes
“Vivekananda followed his teacher, Ramakrishna, in attributing a low value to scriptures and in upholding the supremacy of personal experience. The adequacy of scriptures is compared to the utility of a map to a traveller, before visiting a country. The map, according to Vivekananda, can create only curiosity for first-hand knowledge of the place and can communicate only a vague conception of its reality. Maps are in no way equivalent to the direct knowledge of the country, gathered by actually being there.”
Romain Rolland on Swami Vivekananda
“A great voice is meant to fill the sky. The whole world is its sounding- box ..... Men like Vivekanada are not meant to whisper. They can only proclaim. The sun cannot moderate its own rays. He was deeply conscious of his role. To bring Vedanta out of its obscurity and present it in a rationally acceptable manner; to arouse among his countrymen an awareness of their own spiritual heritage and restore their self-confidence; to show that the deepest truths of Vedanta are universally valid, and that India's mission is to communicate these truths to the whole world — these were the goals he set before himself.”
Helena Roerich on Swami Vivekananda
““The bird of the spirit of Humanity cannot fly with only one wing” —these are words of Vivekananda, who meant to affirm the great significance of the Feminine Principle. Man does not willingly give full rights to woman. However, this opposition but intensifies the forces; and woman, fighting for her cosmic rights, will acquire the knowledge of her power. (LHR I, p 325) (10 September 1934)”
Sri Ramakrishna on Swami Vivekananda
“You are such a big receptacle... I thought you were like a huge banyan-tree and would give shelter to thousands of weary souls.”
Disputed Quotes
Quotes attributed to Swami Vivekananda that are questionable.
About Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda (12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902) was a teacher of Vedanta philosophy, and one of the most famous and influential spiritual leaders of Hinduism.