The word faith means “complete trust or confidence in someone or something”.
In this article we are going to make a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotes and comments on Faith. We have a separate article on Swami Vivekananda’s quotes on Shraddha (listed at a related article at the end of this page).
Swami Vivekananda on Faith
Swami Vivekananda told—
- A man must not only have faith but intellectual faith too. To make a man take up everything and believe it, would be to make him a lunatic.[Source]
- Children of those ancient Aryans, through the grace of the Lord may you have the same pride, may that faith in your ancestors come into your blood, may it become a part and parcel of your lives, may it work towards the salvation of the world![Source]
- Do not disturb the faith of any. . . Our duty is not to disturb the faith of others.[Source]
- Faith, faith, faith in ourselves, faith, faith in God — this is the secret of greatness. If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological gods, and in all the gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you.[Source]
- Faith in ourselves will do everything. I have experienced it in my own life, and am still doing so; and as I grow older that faith is becoming stronger and stronger. He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself.[Source]
- Faith is not belief, it is the grasp on the Ultimate, an illumination.[Source]
- Faith, sympathy — fiery faith and fiery sympathy! Life is nothing, death is nothing, hunger nothing, cold nothing. Glory unto the Lord — march on, the Lord is our General. Do not look back to see who falls — forward — onward! Thus and thus we shall go on, brethren. One falls, and another takes up the work.[Source]
- Have faith in man, whether he appears to you to be a very learned one or a most ignorant one. Have faith in man, whether he appears to be an angel or the very devil himself. Have faith in man first, and then having faith in him, believe that if there are defects in him, if he makes mistakes, if he embraces the crudest and the vilest doctrines, believe that it is not from his real nature that they come, but from the want of higher ideals.[Source]
- Have faith in your destiny.[Source]
- Have faith in yourselves, and stand up on that faith and be strong; that is what we need.[Source]
- Have faith in yourselves, be proud of your ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them.[Source]
- Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you — no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven — but stand up and work![Source]
- Have faith. We will do.[Source]
- Have faith in yourself. You people were once the Vedic Rishis. Only, you have come in different forms, that’s all. I see it clear as daylight that you all have infinite power in you. Rouse that up; arise, arise — apply yourselves heart and soul, gird up your loins.[Source]
- . . . Have patience and be faithful unto death. Do not fight among yourselves. Be perfectly pure in money dealings. . . . We will do great things yet. . . . So long as you have faith and honesty and devotion, everything will prosper.[Source]
- Holiness sincerity, and faith.[Source]
- I am proud to call myself a Hindu, I am proud that I am one of your unworthy servants. I am proud that I am a countryman of yours, you the descendants of the sages, you the descendants of the most glorious Rishis the world ever saw. Therefore have faith in yourselves, be proud of your ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them.[Source]
- I do not care what philosophy you take up; only I am ready to prove here that throughout the whole of India, there runs a mutual and cordial string of eternal faith in the perfection of humanity, and I believe in it myself. And let that faith be spread over the whole land.[Source]
- I remember that grand word of the Katha Upanishad — Shraddhâ or marvellous faith. An instance of Shraddha can be found in the life of Nachiketâ. To preach the doctrine of Shraddha or genuine faith is the mission of my life. Let me repeat to you that this faith is one of the potent factors of humanity and of all religions. First, have faith in yourselves.[Source]
- It is faith that makes a lion of a man.[Source]
- Let a man go down as low as possible; there must come a time when out of sheer desperation he will take an upward curve and will learn to have faith in himself.[Source]
- Let me draw your attention to one thing which unfortunately we always forget: that is — “O man, have faith in yourself.”[Source]
- Let people say whatever they like, stick to your own convictions, and rest assured, the world will be at your feet. They say, “Have faith in this fellow or that fellow”, but I say, “Have faith in yourself first”, that’s the way. Have faith in yourself—all power is in you—be conscious and bring it out. Say, “I can do everything.”[Source]
- Losing faith in one’s self means losing faith in God.[Source]
- So long as you have faith in your Guru, nothing will be able to obstruct your way.[Source]
- The essence of our Faith consists simply in this freedom of the Ishta.[Source]
- 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. You fail only when you do not strive sufficiently to manifest infinite power. As soon as a man or a nation loses faith, death comes.[Source]
- The ideal of faith in ourselves is of the greatest help to us. 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. Throughout the history of mankind, if any motive power has been more potent than another in the lives of all great men and women, it is that of faith in themselves.[Source]
- The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first.[Source]
- To advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God.[Source]
- We are ever free if we would only believe it, only have faith enough. You are the soul, free and eternal, ever free, ever blessed. Have faith enough and you will be free in a minute.[Source]
- Wherever there is evil and wherever there is ignorance and want of knowledge, I have found out by experience that all evil comes, as our scriptures say, relying upon differences, and that all good comes from faith in equality, in the underlying sameness and oneness of things. This is the great Vedantic ideal.[Source]
- Why is it that we three hundred and thirty millions of people have been ruled for the last one thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners who chose to walk over our prostrate bodies? Because they had faith in themselves and we had not.[Source]
- With eternal faith in Him, set fire to the mountain of misery that has been heaped upon India for ages — and it shall be burned down.[Source]
- Work hard, be steady, and have faith in the Lord. Set to work.[Source]
- You know the disease, you know the remedy, only have faith.[Source]
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