Quotes by Swami Vivekananda

• We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
• As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God.
• External nature is only internal nature writ large.
• All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
• All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
• 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.
• You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
• Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
• When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
• The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
• GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.
• If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
• If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
• In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
• Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin; to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
• Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
• Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
• Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
• That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
• Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
• The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
• The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
• The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
• The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
• Unity is strength, division is weakness