SAYINGS OF VIVEKANANDA

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.

We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.

The first sign of your becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful

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

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

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.

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.

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.

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life—face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.

“The earth is enjoyed by heroes”—this is the unfailing truth. Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear.”

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

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

All power is within you. You can do anything and everything. Believe in that. Do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us do nowadays. Stand up and express the divinity within you.

Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.

Are great things ever done smoothly? Time, patience, and indomitable will must show.

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind; therefore as soon as they are becoming prominent in our minds, we should see a physician, take good food, and rest.

Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear.” Tell this to everyone—“Have no fear.”

Be brave! Be strong! Be fearless! Once you have taken up the spiritual life, fight as long as there is any life in you. Even though you know you are going to be killed, fight till you “are killed.” Don’t die of fright. Die fighting. Don’t go down till you are knocked down.

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 marvelous work.

Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is His business.

Be strong! Don’t talk of ghosts and devils. We are the living devils. The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave.

Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.

Brave, bold people, these are what we want. What we want is vigor in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Avoid all these. Avoid all mystery. There is no mystery in religion.

Do not hate anybody, because that hatred which comes out from you must, in the long run, come back to you. If you love, that love will come back to you, completing the circle.

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

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.

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.

Experience is the only teacher we have. We may talk and reason all our lives, but we shall not understand a word of truth until we experience it ourselves.

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.

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

Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.

God is not to be reached by the weak. Never be weak. You have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God?

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

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.

However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.

If superstition enters, the brain is gone.

If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word “fearlessness.”

If there is no strength in body and mind, the Atman cannot be realized. First you have to build the body by good nutritious food—then only will the mind be strong.

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

Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.

Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else.

Oh, to live even for a day in the full light of freedom, to breathe the free air of simplicity! Isn’t that the highest purity?

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.

Our supreme duty is to advance toward freedom—physical, mental, and spiritual—and help others to do so.

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 yourselves. Therefore, make your own future.

Strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal. Weakness is constant strain and misery; weakness is death.

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life—think of it, dream of it, live on that 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, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. Others are mere talking machines.

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.

Thank God for giving you this world as a moral gymnasium to help your development, but never imagine you can help the world.

The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves! If you do not exist, how can God or anybody else exist?

The greatest sin is to think that you are weak. No one is greater: realize that you are Brahman. Nothing has power except what you give it.

The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the greatest cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is fear that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven in a moment.

The weak have no place here, in this life or any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.

The weak, the fearful, the ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo what you have done; the effect must come. Face it, but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to God. Give all, both good and bad. God helps those who do not help themselves.

The will is stronger than anything else. Everything must go down before the will, for it comes from God. A pure and strong will is omnipotent.

There cannot be friendship without equality.

There is only one sin and it is: weakness. When I was a boy, I read Milton’s Paradise Lost. The only good man I had any respect for was Satan. The only saint is that person who never weakens, faces everything, and determines die game.

There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.

Those who grumble at the little thing that has fallen to their lot to do will grumble at everything. Always grumbling they will lead a miserable life…. But those who do their duty putting their shoulder to the wheel will see the light, and higher and higher duties will fall to their share.

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

To the person who desires nothing and does not get entangled in desires, the manifold changes of nature are one panorama of beauty and sublimity.

Try a little harder, and meditation comes. You do not feel the body or anything else. When you come out of it after the hour, you have had the most beautiful rest you ever had in your life. That is the only way you ever give rest to your system. Not even the deepest sleep will give you such a rest as that.

We are suffering from our own karma. It is not the fault of God. What we do is our own fault, nothing else. Why should God be blamed?

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

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

What I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.

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. Aware, awake, great souls! The world is burning in misery. Can you sleep?

What the world wants today is twenty men and women who can dare to stand in the street yonder and say that they possess nothing but God. Who will go? Why should one fear? If this is true, what else could matter? If it is not true, what do our lives matter?

When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.

Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.

Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.

Work unto death—I am with you, and when I am gone, my spirit will work with you. This life comes and goes—wealth, fame, enjoyments are only of a few days. It is better, far better, to die on the field of duty, preaching the truth, than to die like a worldly worm. Advance!

O man, be not weak. Everything that can weaken us as a race we have had for the last thousand years. It seems as if during that period the national life had this one end in view, viz., how to make us weaker and weaker, till we have become real earthworms crawling at the feet of every one who dares to put his foot on us.

Arise Awake and Stop not till the Goal is reached.

The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves. That faith calls out the divinity within. You can do anything!

Religion is the idea which is raising the brute unto man, and man unto God.

One may gain political and social independence, but if one is a slave to his passions and desires, one cannot feel the pure joy of real freedom.

With five hundred men, ... the conquest of India might take fifty years: with as many women, not more than a few weeks.

The older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel.

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.

As long as I live, so do I learn

If any one of you believes what I teach, I will be sorry. I will only be too glad if I can excite in you the power of thinking for yourselves.

Whatever you are doing, put your whole mind on it. If you are shooting, your mind should be only on the target. Then you will never miss. If you are learning your lessons, think only of the lesson. In India boys and girls are taught to do this.

Try a little harder, and meditation comes. You do not feel the body or anything else. When you come out of it after the hour, you have had the most beautiful rest you ever had in your life. That is the only way you ever give rest to your system. Not even the deepest sleep will give you such a rest as that.

Whatever you do, devote your whole Mind, Heart, and Soul to it.

Go on bravely. Do not expect success in a day or a year.

All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that.

Work, work, work - let this be your motto.

Struggle hard to get money, but don't get attached to it.

To me the very essence of education is concentration of the mind, not the collecting of facts.

Brave, bold men, these are what we want. What we want is vigor in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Avoid all these. Avoid all mystery.

Strength does not come by thinking of weakness all the time. The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature. Each of us is heir-apparent to the Emperor of Emperors.


Know that all sins and all evils can be summed up in that one word - weakness. It is weakness that is the motive power in all evil-doing. It is weakness that is the source of all selfishness. It is weakness that makes men injure others. It is weakness that makes them manifest what they are not in reality What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel-gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and secrets of the universe and will accomplish their purpose in any fashion even if it meant going to the bottom of the ocean and meeting Death face to face.


Get up, and set your shoulder to the wheel-how long is this life for? As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise where is the difference between you and the trees and stones? - they too come into existence, decay and die.

Be bold! My children should be brave, above all. Not the least compromise on any account. Preach the highest truths broadcast. Do not fear of losing your respect or of causing unhappy friction. Rest assured that if you serve truth in spite of temptations to forsake it, you will attain, a heavenly strength, in the face of which men will quail ro speak before you things which you do not believe to be true. People would be convinced of what you would say for them, if you can strict serve truth for fourteen years continually, without swerving from it. We are all the sparks of the infinite. How can we be nothing? We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything and man must do everything, Therefore, my brethren, teach this life- saving, great, ennobling, grand doctrine to your children, even from their very birth. This marvelous doctrine of the soul, the perfection of the soul, is This faith in themselves was in the hearts of our ancestors, this faith in themselves was the motive power that pushed them forward and forward in the march of civilization; and if there has been degeneration and if there has been defeat, mark my words. You will find degradation to have started on the day our people lost this faith in themselves.



There I saw that inside the national hearts of both Europe and America resides the tremendous power of the men's faith in themselves. An English boy will tell you, '1 am an Englishman, and I can do anything". The American boy will tell you the same thing, and so will any European boy.


Can our boys say the same thing here? No, nor even the boys' fathers. We have lost faith in ourselves. There is not one system in India, which does not hold the doctrine that God is within, that Divinity reside within all things. Every one our Vedantic systems admit that all purity and perfection and strength are in the soul already.


Born with the consciousness that they were of to be great, they became great.

Do not care for doctrines, do not care for dogmas, or sects, or churches or temples; they count for little compared with the essence of existence in each man which is spirituality and the more this is developed in a man, the more powerful is he for good. Earn that first, acquire that and criticize no one. Show by your lives that religion does not mean words or names, or sects, but that it means spiritual realization. -


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. -

Truth, purity and unselfishness - wherever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition.


It is only in our scriptures that this adjective is given to The Lord-Abhih, Abhih. We have to become Abhih, fearless and our task will be done. Arise! Awake! and stop not till the goal is reached!

Strength, manhood, Kshatra-virya, Brahma-teja. All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that; do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us believe now-a-days. You can do anything and everything, without even the guidance of any one.

Strength is what the Upanishads speak to me from every page. This is the one great thing to remember, it has been the one great lesson I have been taught in my life; strength, it says, strength, O man, be not weak. ~ Everything that can weaken us as a race we have had for the last thousand years. It seems as if during that period the national life had this one end in view, viz., how to make us weaker and weaker, till we have become real earthworms crawling at the feet of every one who dares to put his foot on us.

Therefore, my friends, as one of your blood, as one that lives and dies with you, let me tell you that we want strength, strength and every time strength. And the Upanishads are the great mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the whole world can be vivified, made strong energized through them.

They will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds and all sects to stand on their feet and be free. Freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom, and spiritual freedom are the watchwords of the Upanishads. What I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made. Strength, manhood, Kshatra-virya, Brahma-teja. All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that; do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us believe now-a-days. You can do anything and everything, without even the guidance of any one. All power is there. Stand up and express the divinity within you.

What puerile creatures may be saying against you. Indifference! Indifference! Indifference! Bear in mind the eyes are two in number, and so the ears, but the mouth man of action, the lion-heart, that the goddess of wealth resorts. No need of looking behind. Forward! We want infinite energy, infinite zeal; infinite courage, and infinite patience; then only will great things be achieved.

Weakness is the one cause of suffering. We become miserable, because we are weak. We lie, steal, kill and commit other crimes, because we are weak. We suffer, because we are weak. We die, because we are weak. Where there is nothing to weaken us, there is no death, no sorrow.

Your country requires heroes; be heroes. Stand firm like a rock. Truth always triumphs. What India wants is a new electric fire to stir up a fresh vigor in the national veins. Be brave, be brave; man dies but once.

What makes you weep, my friend? In you is all power. Summon up your all-powerful nature, oh, mighty one! and this whole universe will lie at your feet. It is the Self alone that predominates and not matter. It is those foolish people who identify themselves with their bodies that piteously cry, 'Weak,weak, we are weak'. What the nation wants is pluck and scientific genius. We want great spirit, tremendous energy and boundless enthusiasm; no womanishness will do. It is the man of action, the lionheart that the goddess of wealth resorts to.

Strength is life, weakness is death; strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal! Weakness is constant strain and misery. Weakness is death. Let positive, strong, helpful thoughts enter into your brains from very childhood.

Strength is the one thing needful. Strength is the medicine for the world's disease. Strength is the medicine which the poor must have when tyrannized over by the rich. Strength is the medicine which the ignorant must have when oppressed by the learned. And it is the medicine that sinners must have when
tyrannized over by other sinners.
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 yourselves. Therefore make your own future.

Thinking all the time that we are diseased, will not cure us; medicine is necessary. Being reminded of weakness does not help much. Give strength; and strength does not come by thinking of weakness all the time. The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength.

What our country now wants are muscles of iron and nerves of steel - gigantic wills which nothing can resist, which can penetrate into the mysteries and secrets of the universe and will accomplish their purpose even if it meant going to the bottom of the ocean and meeting Death face to face.
We speak of many things parrot-like, but never do them; speaking and not doing has become a habit with us. What is the cause of that? Physical weakness. This sort of weak brain is not able to do anything. We must strengthen it. First of all our young men must be strong. Religion will come afterwards. You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through a study of the Gita. You will understand Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger. You will understand the mighty strength of Krishna better with a little of strong blood in you. You will understand the Upanishads better and the glory of the Atman when your body stands firm upon your feet and you feel yourselves as men.
Be moral, be brave, be a whole-hearted man - strictly moral, brave unto desperation. Don't bother your head with religious theories; cowards only sin, brave men never. Try to love anybody and everybody.
Faith, sympathy, fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God - this is the secret of greatness.

This faith in themselves was in the hearts of our ancestors, this faith in themselves was the motive power that pushed them forward and forward in the march of civilization; and if there has been degeneration and if there has been defect, mark my words, you will find degradation to have started on the day our people lost this faith in themselves. Losing faith in one's self means losing faith in God.

He who can properly prepare a chhilam of tobacco can also meditate properly.

Journey Of Soul

In this topic, lemme introduce you to the journey of our soul.

It is said that every soul attains the form of 84 lakh forms of life on this earth before the human form is attained which will go on. There are three storage boxes for deeds of every soul, they are:
1) Sachitam 2) Prarartham 3) Agami.

Of these three,
sachitam stores the deeds
prartham is what going to happen
agami is what happened

So, how are the deeds stored ? lets see

Our deeds are stored in the five elements of life - air, water, fire, land, sky.

That is the reason one cant live without the five elements. You release some kind of vibrations for every deed which are stored in these elements. These vibrations will again return to you whatever form you attain.

See, some times the pujari says that you have problem with water and warns not to go near it. Reason is same, the vibrations stored in water

These five elements love God. So, by repeating the name of God, the vibrations will be neutralised.

Also, whats happening now, praratham, has relation with sachitam. the deeds stored in sachitam will start coming back to you in praratham depending on the situation. This can be controlled by the repetition of name of God. For example, say you are travelling on bike, some stupids came rashly and dashed you and both fell, but you are chanting the name of God, then you will get less injuries ( It really happened to my sir who told us of these things).
So, if anyone beats you, dont beat him, he will have one deed in his sachitam than yours which will be neutralised if you beat him.

But, one thing no one can change is agami. Agami is what happened. so, you cant repeat history. If you do some bad, you cant recover it. It returns to you whatever form you are born with. You will keep on attaining the form of human unless all the deeds are neutralised. Might be some unlucky souls may have to see animal forms again from human forms due to the worst of the deeds

My friends, I thus want you all to remember all these things before commiting bad deeds