Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change themselves

For the majority of mankind, religion is a habit, or, more precisely, tradition is their religion. Though it seems strange, I think that the first step to moral perfection is your liberation from the religion in which you were raised. Not a single person has come to perfection except by following this way.

And remembering how those very beliefs had repelled me and had seemed meaningless when professed by people whose lives conflicted with them, and how these same beliefs attracted me and seemed reasonable when I saw that people lived in accord with them, I understood why I had then rejected those beliefs and found them meaningless, yet now accepted them and found them full of meaning. I understood that I had erred, and why I erred. I had erred not so much because I thought incorrectly, as because I lived badly. I understood that it was not an error in my thought that had hid truth from me, as much as my life itself in the exceptional conditions of epicurean gratification of desires in which I passed it. I understood that my question as to what my life is, and the answer, an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that the answer referred only to my life; but I had referred it to life in general. I asked myself what my life is, and got the reply: An evil and an absurdity. And really my life—a life of indulgence of desires—was senseless and evil, and therefore the reply, “Life is evil and an absurdity,” referred only to my life, but not to human life in general.

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

The you that goes in one side of the meditation experience is not the same you that comes out the other side.

In the alchemy of man's soul almost all noble attributes- courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

Everything you have in your life, you have attracted to yourself because of the way you think, because of the person that you are. You can change your life because you can change the way you think.

I am influenced at the present time by far higher considerations and by a nobler idea of duty than I ever was when I held the Evangelical belief.

It was Christianity which first painted the devil on the worlds walls; It was Christianity which first brought sin into the world. Belief in the cure which it offered has now been shaken to it's deepest roots; but belief in the sickness which it taught and propagated continues to exists.

The call to religion is not a call to be better than your fellows, but to be better than yourself. Religion is relative to the individual.

The way to develop inner peace through meditation begins with the recognition that the destroyer of inner peace is not some external foe, but is within us. Therefore, the solution is within us too. However, that inner change does not take place immediately in the way that we switch on a light, but takes weeks, months and years.

The transformation toward eternal life is gradual. The heavy gross energy of body, mind, and spirit must first be purified and uplifted. When the energy ascends... then self mastery can be sought.

In the history of a soul’s evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured.

We are not the worst moments of our lives. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking.

Love and faith are both a search, a process, it doesn't stay the same; it comes and goes. In some people, it's asleep for a long time and then it wakes up as it evolves.

To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.

Some groups and individuals still are immersed totally in the egoic consciousness. Others already are free or in the process of stepping out of ego. The arising of the new consciousness already has started for many people. They are not yet recognizable as groups, but they are here and there.

The most difficult matter is not so much to change the world as yourself.

Don't ask the world to change....you change first.

One of the most difficult things is not to change society - but to change yourself.

Change the fabric of your own soul and your own visions, and you change all.

Aging is a staircase - the upward ascension of the human spirit, bringing us into wisdom, wholeness and authenticity. As you may know, the entire world operates on a universal law: entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy means that everything in the world, everything, is in a state of decline and decay, the arch. There's only one exception to this universal law, and that is the human spirit, which can continue to evolve upwards.

The kind of conversation I like is one in which you are prepared to emerge a slightly different person.

What is most needed right now is evolving human consciousness. Without that, science, technology, development, everything will go waste.

No one ever became thoroughly bad in one step.