Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Each nation has a main current in life; in India it is religion. Make it strong and the waters on either side must move along with it. This is one phase of my line of thought. In time, I hope to bring them all out, but at present I find I have a mission in this country also. Moreover, I expect help in this country and from here alone. But up to date I could not do anything except spreading my ideas. Now I want that a similar attempt be made in India.

The strength of a country is the strength of its religious convictions.

India is the most religious country in the world, Sweden is the most secular country in the world, and America is a country of Indians ruled by Swedes.

Religion is the life of India, religion is the language of this country, the symbol of all its movements.

Each nation has a theme: everything else is secondary. India's theme is religion.

Here in India, it is religion that forms the very core of the national heart. It is the backbone, the bed-rock, the foundation upon which the national edifice has been built. Politics, power, and even intellect form a secondary consideration here. Religion, therefore, is the one consideration in India.

We have seen that our vigour, our strength, nay, our national life is in our religion.

Never was Catholicism, never were the ideas of chivalry, impressed on men so deeply, so multifariously, as the bourgeois ideas.

For a country is not merely a piece of earth; it is, above all, a compendium of social, cultural, and historical factors which begin to acquire sense and order through the process of writing.

I grew up on cricket and I think Australian kids are getting so Americanized, you know?

I can't help being Christian because I was brought up in Britain, and the morality of Christianity is part of the fabric of this country.

A nation is a work of art and a work of time.

The Irish nation is de facto a Catholic nation

The role of the Church of England … has always been to hold in trust for the nation the Christian faith, and values which in the past created the nation and to try to […] act as an interpreter and bridge between many different people looking for a faith and spirituality and not doing that exclusively. We do it these days in partnership with other churches, but the Church of England has always had a particular responsibility for this role.

Christian attitudes are still important in a society even if they are no longer connected with belief.

Nationalism is spiritual and all-embracing, in the sense that it opens its arms to and spreads its wings over all those who have shared with the Arabs their history and have lived in the environment of their language and culture for generations, so that they have become Arab in thought and feeling. There is no fear that nationalism will clash with religion, for, like religion, it flows from the heart and issues from the will of God; they walk arm in arm, supporting each other, especially when religion represents the genius of the nationality and is in harmony with its nature.

Nationality is belief in a common origin and end.

Absent a national church, Christianity has frequently provided an invisible mortar for our culture and a common vocabulary for our great debates.

No nation is formed within a night, one generation's era of even two. A nation can be described as the continuous string of many generations that time, this pitiless, thoughtless sword of nature, separates their physical connections along the course of their history.

Portugal was born in the shadow of the Catholic Church and religion, from the beginning it was the formative element of the soul of the nation and the dominant trait of character of the Portuguese people.

The question whether nationalism, patriotism, the love of the homeland, is beneficial either to the individual or to the human race as a whole is open to discussion. It might be a much better world if this instinct were eradicated. On the other hand, it might be worse. The fact is that the instinct exists, and that, far from losing its grip on us, on all of us, it is becoming constantly more intense, more exacting, more all-embracing…. Nationalism as we know it may pass, but for the moment it is more powerful than any other idea or even than any religion.

A nation’s literature is the expression of a nation's mind in writing and the concentration of intellect for the purpose of spreading itself abroad and multiplying its energy

Building a state and fostering a national identity take time and good leadership—bold ideas, initiative, and the willingness to compromise.

The relationship of a people to their homeland is crucial. A people will naturally have a difficult time maintaining a common cultural identity without a collective presence in their homeland. Only in its homeland can a people develop economically, culturally and socially as a homogeneous entity. In fact, this is the crux of why some of us consider it necessary to struggle to live in our homeland.

For more than 1000 years our spiritual traditions and common values have been nurtured and begotten here. Today, as we restore the value of patriotism, historical memory and cultural tradition, we are seeking firmer bonds with Mount Athos.