Swami Vivekananda Quotes on Knowledge

Quotes

• “The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek. . . . It is a man-making religion that we want. . . . Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong. . . . For the next fifty years. ... let all other gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, ever”

  Quoted from Will Durant , Our Oriental Heritage.

• “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 forever. 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 a”

  Swami Vivekananda Quoted in Talageri, S. (2000). The Rigveda: A historical analysis. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

• “Vedânta philosophy : Lectures by the Swâmi Vivekânanda on Râja Yoga (1899), Ch. VI : Pratyâhâra and Dhâraṇâm”

  To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean ”, says the persevering soul ; “at my will mountains will crumble up”. Have that sort of energy , that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal.

• “Swâmi Vivekânanda on Râja Yoga (1899), Ch. VI : Pratyâhâra and Dhâraṇâ”

  A perfect life is a contradiction in terms.

• “Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battle-field than to live a life of defeat.”

  Call to the Nation

• “God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not.”

  Pearls of Wisdom

• “If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.”

  Pearls of Wisdom

• “Stand upon the Self, only then can we truly love the world. Take a very high stand; knowing our universal nature, we must look with perfect calmness upon all the panorama of the world.”

  Pearls of Wisdom

• “We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.”

  Pearls of Wisdom

• “Learn to recognise the mother in Evil , Terror , Sorrow , Denial, as well as in Sweetness and in Joy .”

  Address to his English disciples, as quoted in The life of Vivekananda and the Universal Gospel , 5th edition (1960) by Romain Rolland , p. 53

• “Buddha is the only prophet who said, I do not care to know your various theories about God. What is the use of discussing all the subtle doctrines about the soul ? Do good and be good .”

  Call to the Nation

• “All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind ; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.”

  Pearls of Wisdom

• “All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us.”

  Pearls of Wisdom

• “As long as we believe ourselves to be even the least different from God, fear remains with us; but when we know ourselves to be the One, fear goes; of what can we be afraid?”

  Pearls of Wisdom