Top 500 Swami Vivekananda Quotes (2025 Update)
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451. “The Older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel.”

— Swami Vivekananda

452. “Hindu Dharma is the quintessence of our national life, hold fast to it if you want your country to survive, or else you would be wiped out in three generations.”

— Swami Vivekananda

453. “If Jesus Christ was not perfect, then the religion bearing his name falls to the ground.”

— Swami Vivekananda

454. “A sapling must be hedged about for protection, but when it becomes a tree, a hedge would be a hindrance. So there is no need to criticise and condemn the old forms.”

— Swami Vivekananda

455. “The ideal of womanhood in India is motherhood – that marvellous, unselfish, all – suffering, ever – forgiving mother.”

— Swami Vivekananda

456. “There is nothing so high as renunciation of self.”

— Swami Vivekananda

457. “Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth-Brahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.”

— Swami Vivekananda

458. “Put God behind everything-human beings, animals, food, and work. Make this a habit.”

— Swami Vivekananda

459. “All the forces that are working in this body have been produced out of food; we see that every day.”

— Swami Vivekananda

460. “That is the great fact which you ought to remember. We are the children of the Almighty, we are sparks of the infinite, divine fire. How can we be nothings? We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything, and man must do everything.”

— Swami Vivekananda

461. “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.”

— Swami Vivekananda

462. “I am teaching you now about it, but how many of you will practice it?”

— Swami Vivekananda

463. “Sincerity of conviction and purity of motive will surely gain the day; and even a small minority, armed with these, is surely destined to prevail against all odds.”

— Swami Vivekananda

464. “The uplift of the women, the awakening of the masses must come first, and then only can any real good come about for the country, for India.”

— Swami Vivekananda

465. “Thinking of objects, attachment to them is formed in a man. From attachment longing, and from longing anger grows.”

— Swami Vivekananda

466. “Unselfishness is God. One may live on a throne, in a golden palace, and be perfectly unselfish; and then he is in God. Another may live in a hut and wear rags, and have nothing in the world; yet, if he is selfish, he is intensely merged in the world.”

— Swami Vivekananda

467. “We want to lead mankind to the place where there is neither the Vedas, nor the Bible, nor the Koran; yet this has to be done by harmonizing the Vedas, the Bible, and the Koran.”

— Swami Vivekananda

468. “Desire, ignorance, and inequality – this is the trinity of bondage.”

— Swami Vivekananda

469. “Two things control man’s character; Strength and Pity.”

— Swami Vivekananda

470. “If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.”

— Swami Vivekananda

471. “The “ego” like its correlative “non-ego”, is the product of the body, mind etc. The only proof of the existence of the real Self is realisation.”

— Swami Vivekananda

472. “It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion-the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing. But to get the higher.”

— Swami Vivekananda

473. “Proselytism is tolerated by Hinduism. Any man, whether he be a Shudra or Chandala, can expound philosophy even to a Brahmin. The truth can be learnt from the lowest individual, no matter to what caste or creed he belongs.”

— Swami Vivekananda

474. “The test of Ahimsa is absence of jealousy.”

— Swami Vivekananda

475. “The principles of the Vedanta not only should be preached everywhere in India, but also outside. Our thought must enter into the make-up of the minds of every nation, not through writings, but through persons.”

— Swami Vivekananda

476. “Be not afraid, for all great power throughout the history of humanity has been with the people. From out of their ranks have come all the greatest geniuses of the world, and history can only repeat itself. Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work.”

— Swami Vivekananda

477. “Good and evil thoughts are each a potent power, and they fill the universe.”

— Swami Vivekananda

478. “An atheist can be charitable but not religious. But the religious man must be charitable.”

— Swami Vivekananda

479. “Holiness sincerity, and faith.”

— Swami Vivekananda

480. “The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil – doers, only adds to the evil in the world.”

— Swami Vivekananda

481. “A Sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of independent thought, which draws from all religions; his is a life of realisation, not merely of theory or belief, much less of dogma.”

— Swami Vivekananda

482. “All growth, progress, well – being, or degradation is but relative.”

— Swami Vivekananda

483. “Hindus believe Buddha to be an Avatara.”

— Swami Vivekananda

484. “The forms have value only so far as they are expressions of the life within. If they have ceased to express life, crush them out without mercy.”

— Swami Vivekananda

485. “From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hinduism religion.”

— Swami Vivekananda

486. “The great Vaishnava religion of India has also sprung from a Tamil Pariah – Shathakopa – “who was a dealer in winnowing-fans but was a Yogin all the while”.”

— Swami Vivekananda

487. “I am the thread that runs through all these pearls, and each pearl is a religion or even a sect thereof. Such are the different pearls, and God is the thread that runs through all of them; most people, however, are entirely unconscious of it.”

— Swami Vivekananda

488. “Say – i am the Atman in which my lower ego has become merged for ever. Be perfect in this idea; and then as long as the body endures, speak unto others this message of fearlessness: “Thou art That”, “Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached!””

— Swami Vivekananda

489. “If you want to live, go back to Christ. You are not Christians. Go back to Christ. Go back to him who had nowhere to lay his head. Better be ready to live in rags with Christ than to live in palaces without him.”

— Swami Vivekananda

490. “We become forgetful of the ego when we think of the body as dedicated to the service of others – the body with which most complacently we identify the ego.”

— Swami Vivekananda

491. “Have faith in Guru, in his teachings, and in the surety that you can get free. Think day and night that this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.”

— Swami Vivekananda

492. “I ask you all so earnestly to open girl’s schools in every village and try to uplift them. If the Conditions of women are raised, then their children will, by their noble actions, glorify the name of the Country.”

— Swami Vivekananda

493. “Religion in India must be made as free and as easy of access as is God’s air.”

— Swami Vivekananda

494. “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.”

— Swami Vivekananda

495. “Science, art, learning and metaphysical research all have their proper functions in life, but if you seek to blend them, you destroy their individual characteristics until, in time, you eliminate the spiritual, for instance, from the religious altogether.”

— Swami Vivekananda

496. “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.”

— Swami Vivekananda

497. “My ideal, indeed, can be put into a few words, and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.”

— Swami Vivekananda

498. “Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.”

— Swami Vivekananda

499. “In these days of intellectual awakening and steadily asserting public opinion, the holy places of the Hindus, their condition, and method of work have not escaped tile keen eye of criticism; and this city, being the holy of holies to all Hindus, has not failed to attract its full share of censure.”

— Swami Vivekananda

500. “You have the right to work, but do not become so degenerate as to look for results. Work incessantly, but see something behind the work. Even good deeds can find a man in great bondage. Therefore be not bound by good deeds or by desires for name and fame.”

— Swami Vivekananda