Swami Vivekananda

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

"India is immortal if she persists in her search for God. But if she goes in for politics and social conflict, she will die."

"Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!"

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

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

"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."

"If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature."

"This is the gist of all worship — to be pure and to do good to others. He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva; and if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary. He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Shiva in him, without thinking of his caste, or creed, or race, or anything, with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples."

"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?"

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

"Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow—never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more."

"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, saw how the machine is working, the English national life, mixed with them, found where the heart-beat of the nation was, the more I loved them. There is none among you here present, my brothers, who loves the English people more than I do. 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 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."