Swami Vivekananda quotes for UPSC

If I do an evil action, I must suffer for it; there is no power in this universe to stop or stay it.

To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.

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.

Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are, you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or temple.

Please everyone without becoming a hypocrite or a coward.

Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.

The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!

Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. … Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.

Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.

It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.

What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt.

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.

The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.

This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.

After so much austerity I have known that the highest truth is this: He is present in every being! These are all in manifold forms of him. There is no other God to seek for! He alone is worshipping God, who serves all beings!

We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.

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.

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.

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.

Strength is Life, Weakness is death.

Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right?

This I have seen in life—those who are overcautious about themselves fall into dangers at every step; those who are afraid of losing honor and respect, get only disgrace; and those who are always afraid of loss, always lose.

It is the coward and the fool who says, This is my fate – so says the Sanskrit proverb. But it is the strong man who stands up and says, I will make my own fate. It is people who are getting old who talk of fate. Young men generally do not come to astrology.

Work on with the intrepidity of a lion but at the same time with the tenderness of a flower.

A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

Do any deserve liberty who are not ready to give it to others? Let us calmly go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary fretting and fuming.

Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.

The idea of perfect womanhood is perfect independence.

Women will work out their destinies — much better, too, than men can ever do for them. All the mischief to women has come because men undertook to shape the destiny of women.

Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.

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

Education is the manifestation of perfection present already in man. Religion is the manifestation of the divinity already in man.

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

To believe blindly is to degenerate the human soul. Be an atheist if you want, but do not believe in anything unquestioningly.

The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.

Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.

All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.

Superstition is our great enemy, but bigotry is worse.

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.

Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities.

The varieties of religious belief are an advantage, since all faiths are good, so far as they encourage us to lead a religious life. The more sects there are, the more opportunities there are for making a successful appeal to the divine instinct in all of us.

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.

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

Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.

I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything he really deserves.

Perfection does not come from belief or faith. Talk does not count for anything. Parrots can do that. Perfection comes through selfless work.

Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.

Do not look back upon what has been done. Go ahead!

This world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.

It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties.

This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.

Great undertakings are always fraught with many obstacles. It is these obstacles which knock and shape great characters.

The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of strength that is already within them.

We must overcome difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.

In every attempt there will be one set of men who will applaud, and another who will pick holes. Go on doing your own work, what need have you to reply to any party?

I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.

A perfect life is a contradiction in terms.

The first sign that you are becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful.

You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.

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.

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.

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.

Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood. Lay yourselves open to these thoughts, and not to weakening and paralysing ones.

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.

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.

When we come to nonattachment, then we can understand the marvelous mystery of the universe: how it is intense activity and at the same time intense peace, how it is work every moment and rest every moment.

We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful.

The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are, the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.

Arise, awake and Stop not till the Goal is Reached.

Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.