In this article you’ll find a collection of Swami Vivekananda‘s quotations where he asked to stand up and [. . . to do something]. All/most of these quotations are inspiring and motivational.
- All power is there. Stand up and express the divinity within you.[Source]
- All weakness, all bondage is imagination. Speak one word to it, it must vanish. Do not weaken! There is no other way out…. Stand up and be strong! No fear. No superstition. Face the truth as it is! If death comes — that is the worst of our miseries — let it come! We are determined to die game. That is all the religion I know. I have not attained to it, but I am struggling to do it. I may not, but you may. Go on![Source]
- Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight! Die if you must. There is none to help you. You are all the world. Who can help you?[Source]
- Be strong and stand up and seek the God of Love. This is the highest strength.[Source]
- Have faith, as Nachiketa. At the time of his father’s sacrifice, faith came unto Nachiketa; ay, I wish that faith would come to each of you; and every one of you would stand up a giant, a world-mover with a gigantic intellect — an infinite God in every respect. That is what I want you to become. This is the strength that you get from the Upanishads, this is the faith that you get from there.[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]
- Stand up and be bold, and all the heaven that ever existed is yours.[Source]
- Stand up and die game! … Do not add one lunacy to another. Do not add your weakness to the evil that is going to come. That is all I have to say to the world. Be strong![Source]
- Stand up for God; let the world go. Have no compromise.[Source]
- Strength, O man, strength, say the Upanishads, stand up and be strong. Ay, it is the only literature in the world where you find the word “Abhih”, “fearless”, used again and again; in no other scripture in the world is this adjective applied either to God or to man. Abhih, fearless![Source]
- The awakening of the soul to its bondage and its effort to stand up and assert itself — this is called life.[Source]
- The Bhakta should be ready to stand up and say, “I do not want anything from you, Lord, but if you need anything from me I am ready to give.”[Source]
- The Gita opens with this very significant verse: “Arise, O Prince! Give up this faint-heartedness, this weakness! Stand up and fight!”[Source]
- The greatest sin is to think yourself weak. No one is greater: realise you are Brahman. Nothing has power except what you give it. We are beyond the sun, the stars, the universe. Teach the Godhood of man. Deny evil, create none. Stand up and say, I am the master, the master of all. We forge the chain, and we alone can break it.[Source]
- What makes a man stand up and work? Strength. Strength is goodness, weakness is sin. If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bomb-shell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word fearlessness.[Source]
- You are all Sons of God, immortal spirit. “Know”, he declared, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” “I and my Father are one.” Dare you stand up and say, not only that “I am the Son of God”, but I shall also find in my heart of hearts that “I and my Father are one”? That was what Jesus of Nazareth said. He never talks of this world and of this life. He has nothing to do with it, except that he wants to get hold of the world as it is, give it a push and drive it forward and onward until the whole world has reached to the effulgent Light of God, until everyone has realised his spiritual nature, until death is vanished and misery banished.[Source]
“Stand up on your own feet”
Main article: “Stand up on your own feet”
- All must struggle to be individuals— strong, standing on your own feet, thinking your own thoughts, realising your own Self. No use swallowing doctrines others pass on—standing up together like soldiers in jail, sitting down together, all eating the same food, all nodding their heads at the same time. Variation is the sign of life. Sameness is the sign of death.[Source]
- By education I do not mean the present system, but something in the line of positive teaching. Mere book-learning won’t do. We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one’s own feet.[Source]
- First make the people of the country stand on their legs by rousing their inner power, first let them learn to have good food and clothes and plenty of enjoyment — then tell them how to be free from this bondage of enjoyment.[Source]