In this article we’ll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotes and comments on destiny.
- Another theory in modern times has been presented by several schools, that man’s destiny is to go on always improving, always struggling towards, but never reaching the goal. This statement, though apparently very nice, is also absurd, because there is no such thing as motion in a straight line. Every motion is in a circle. If you can take up a stone, and project it into space, and then live long enough, that stone, if it meets with no obstruction, will come back exactly to your hand. A straight line, infinitely projected, must end in a circle. Therefore, this idea that the destiny of man is progressing ever forward and forward, and never stopping, is absurd.[Source]
- Have faith in your destiny.[Source]
- I am the master. I raise my hand, and lo, they vanish! All this is nonsense. And fear? I am the Fear of fear, the Terror of terror, I am the fearless secondless One, I am the Rule of destiny, the Wiper-out of fact. Shri wah Guru![Source]
- Man has wanted to look beyond, wanted to expand himself; and all that we call progress, evolution, has been always measured by that one search, the search for human destiny, the search for God.[Source]
- No study has taken so much of human energy, whether in times past or present, as the study of the soul, of God, and of human destiny.[Source]
- One’s destiny is’ in one’s own hands.[Source]
- 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.
- Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny.[Source]
- The knowledge of Brahman is the ultimate goal — the highest destiny of man.[Source]
- The present is determined by our past actions, and the future by the present.[Source]
- There is a fine song of Nareshchandra, where occurs the following: “If what lies in one’s destiny is to happen anyhow, O Mother, then what good all this invoking by the holy name of Durgâ?”[Source]
- There is no law in human nature, there is no destiny, no fate.[Source]
- This so-called law, or fate, or destiny occupied only an infinitesimal part of our nature.[Source]
- Those writers of Shâstra who do not tend towards work say that all-powerful destiny prevails; but others who are workers consider the will of man as superior. Knowing that the quarrel between those who believe in the human will as the remover of misery and others who rely on destiny is due to indiscrimination — try to ascend the highest peak of knowledge.[Source]
- We make our own destiny.[Source]
We are working out our own destiny
From a lecture delivered in America—[Source]
We see in this life that we can shape and form our future every one of us, every day, is trying to shape the morrow; today we fix the fate of the morrow; tomorrow we shall fix the fate of the day after, and so on. It is quite logical that this reasoning can be pushed backward too. If by our own deeds we shape our destiny in the future why not apply the same rule to the past? If, in an infinite chain, a certain number of links are alternately repeated then, if one of these groups of links be explained, we can explain the whole chain. So, in this infinite length of time, if we can cut off one portion and explain that portion and understand it, then, if it be true that nature is uniform, the same explanation must apply to the whole chain of time. If it be true that we are working out our own destiny here within this short space of time if it be true that everything must have a cause as we see it now, it must also be true that that which we are now is the effect of the whole of our past; therefore, no other person is necessary to shape the destiny of mankind but man himself.
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