Swami Vivekananda
(1863 - 1902)

• All power is within you. Believe in that, do not believe you are weak. ...Stand up and express the Divinity within you.
• Man has infinite power within himself, and he can realise it.
• Arise, awake, sleep no more; within each of you there is the power to remove all wants and all miseries. Believe this and that power will be manifested.
• Our mistakes have a place here. Go on. Do not look back if you have done something that is not right. Now, do you believe you could be what you are today, had you not made those mistakes before? Bless your mistakes, then. They have been angels unawares... Hold onto the ideal. March on!
• All expansion is life, all contraction is death.
• Truth alone gives strenght... Strenght alone is the medicine for the world's disease.
• How has all the knowledge in the world been gained but by the concentration of the powers of the mind? ... There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The mor econcentrated it is, the more poewr is brought to bear on one point; that is the secret.
• Every duty is holy, and devotion to duty is the highest form of the worship of God.
• Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject as poison.
• Service to humanity is the highest form of worship.
• Education is not the amount od information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. It is man-making education that we want.
• We want that education by which character is formed, strenght of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.
• Stand up, be bold, be strrong. Take the whole responsibility on your shoulders.
• Give as the rose gives perfume, because it is its own nature, utterly unconcious of giving.
• So long as millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every man a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.
• Give up jealousy and conceit. Learn to work unitedly for others.
• The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strenght.
• The power of love is infinitely of preater potency than the power of hatred.
• It is gentleness that has the strenght to live on and to fructify, and not merely brutality and physical force.
• Faith, faith, faith in ourselves! Faith, faith in God - this is the secret of greatness.
• Duty is seldom sweet. It is only when love greases its wheels that it runs smoothly... Duty is sweet only through love.
• 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.
• We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care of what you think.
• There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly only on one wing.
• All knowledge depends on calmness of the mind.
• Man thinks foolishly that he can make himself happy, and after years of struggle finds out at last that true happiness consists in killing selfishness and that no one can make him happy except himself.
• Cleanse the mind, this is all of religion.
• The only remedy for bad habits is counter habits. Character is the repeated habits, and repeated (good) habits alone can reform character.
• Choose the highest ideal and live your life up to that.
• He who struggles is better than he who never attempts.
• Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.
• The eternal law is self-sacrifice, not self-assertion.
• Bear every misery without even knowing you are miserable.
• Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached!

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