Swami Vivekananda Quotes for Students

1. A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library, but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to, and this deserving is produced by Karma. (CW(1), p31)
2. All expansion is life, all contraction is death. All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. (CW(6), p320)
3. All power is within you; you can do anything and everything. Believe in that, do not believe that you are weak; do not believe that you are half-crazy lunatics, as most of us do nowadays. You can do anything and everything without even the guidance of anyone. All power is there. Stand up and express the divinity within you. (CW(3), p284)
4. All that man has to do is to take care of three things: good thought, good word, good deed. That is all. (CW(1), p492)
5. Anything that changes cannot be immortal. (CW(1), p254)
6. Anything that makes you weak physically, intellectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true. CW(3), p225)
7. Arise, awake and stop not till the desired end is reached. (CW(3), p318)
8. Arise, awake, for the time is propitious. Already everything is opening out before us. Be bold and fear not. (CW(3), p318)
9. Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. (CW(7), p501)
10. Books are infinite in number, and time is short; therefore the secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it. (CW(1), p236)
11. Brave, bold men, these are what we want. What we want is vigour in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas. Avoid all these. Avoid all mystery. (CW (3), p278)
12. 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. (CW(5), p342)
13. Competition rouses envy, and it kills the kindliness of the heart. (CW(1) p71)
14. Do not be in a hurry, do not go out to imitate anybody else. (CW(3), p381)
15. Do not say, “You are bad”; say only, “You are good, but be better. (CW(7), p22)
16. Do not wait for anybody or anything. Do whatever you can. Build your hope on none. (CW(5), p34)
17. Each is great in his own place. (CW(7), p7)
18. Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. (CW(1), p257)
19. Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. (CW(1), p257)
20. Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. (CW(3), p302)
21. Education​​ is the manifestation of the perfection already in man. (CW(4), p358)
22. Every man must develop according to his nature. (CW(5), 292)
23. Every man should take up his ideal own ideal and endeavour to accomplish it. That is a surer way to progress than taking up other man’s ideal, which he can never hope to accomplish. (CW(1), p41)
24. Every mental and physical blow that is given to the soul, by which, as it were, fire is struck from it, and by which its own power and knowledge are discovered, is Karma, this word being used in its widest sense (CW(1), p29)
25. Every mental and physical blow that is given to the soul, by which, as it were, fire is struck from it, and by which its own power and knowledge are discovered, is Karma, this word being used in its widest sense (CW(1), p29) – (50)
26. Every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun. (CW (1), p17)
27. Every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun. (CW (1), p17)
28. Everything can be sacrificed for truth, truth cannot be sacrificed for anything. (CW(5), 410)
29. Feel, my children, feel; feel for the poor, the ignorant, the downtrodden; feel till the heart stops and the brain reels and you think you will go mad — then pour the soul out at the feet of the Lord, and then will come power, help, and indomitable energy. (CW(4), p367)
30. Help thyself out by thyself. None else can help thee, friend. For thou alone art thy greatest enemy, thou alone art thy greatest friend. Get hold of the Self, then. Stand up. Don’t be afraid. (CW(2), p403)
31. I am sure if you look back upon your lives you will find that you were always vainly trying to get help from others which never came. All the help that has come was from within yourselves. You only had the fruits of what you yourselves worked for, and yet you were strangely hoping all the time for help. (CW(2), p324)
32. 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. (CW(7), p176)
33. If education is identical with information, the libraries are the greatest sages in the world, and encyclopaedias are the Rishis. (CW(3), p302)​​
34. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be; if you think yourselves impure, impure you will be; if you think yourselves pure, pure you will be. This teaches us not to think ourselves as weak, but as strong, omnipotent, omniscient. (CW(3), p130)
35. Ignorance is the mother of all the evil and all the misery we see. Let men have light, let them be pure and spiritually strong and educated, then alone will misery cease in the world, not before. (CW(1), p53)
36. In the vast majority of cases, it would be found that it was misery that taught more than happiness, it was poverty that taught more than wealth, it was blows that brought out their inner fire more than praise. (CW (1), p27)
37. Let us work on, doing as we go whatever happens to be our duty, and being ever ready to put our shoulders to the wheel. Then surely shall we see the Light! (CW(1) p71)
38. Liberty is the first condition of growth. (CW(4), p367)
39. Man is born to conquer nature and not to follow it. (CW(5), 409)
40. Man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth from lower truth to higher truth. (CW(1), p17)
41. My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made. Strength, manhood, Kshatra Virya BrahmaTeja. (CW(5), p117)
42. Neither money pays, nor name, nor fame, nor learning; it is character that can cleave through adamantine walls of difficulties. (CW(7), p487)
43. Never are the wants of a beggar fulfilled. (CW(5), p353)
44. Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow — never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more. (CW(2), p152)
45. Never say, “No”, never say, “I cannot”, for you are infinite. (CW(2) p300)
46. No one can get anything unless he earns it. This is an eternal law. (CW (1), p31)
47. No one was ever really taught by another; each of us has to teach himself. The external teacher offers only the suggestion which rouses the internal teacher to work to understand things. (CW(1), p93)
48. Our duty to others means helping others; doing good to the world. Why should we do good to the world? Apparently to help the world, but really to help ourselves. (CW(1), p75)
49. Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. (CW(1) p38)
50. Seek the highest, always the highest, for in the Highest is eternal bliss. If I am hunt, I will hunt the lion. (CW(5), p275)
51. Strength is in goodness, in purity (CW(5), p409)
52. Strength is life, weakness is death. (CW(5), p352)
53. Take care! Beware of everything that is untrue; stick to truth and we shall succeed, maybe slowly, but surely. (CW(4), p370)
54. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succour you want is within yourselves. Therefore, make your own future. (CW(2), p225)
55. 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, and this is the way great spiritual giants are produced. (CW(1), p177)
56. The apple tree should not be judged by the standard of the oak, nor the oak by that of the apple. To judge the apple tree you must take the apple standard, and for the oak, its own standard. (CW(1), p41)
57. The chaste brain has tremendous energy and gigantic will-power. Without chastity there can be no spiritual strength. (CW(1), p263)
58. The chaste brain has tremendous energy and gigantic will-power. Without chastity, there can be no spiritual strength. (CW(1), p263)
59. The eye is in the forehead and not in the back. Move onward and carry into practice that which you are very proud to call your religion, (CW(5), p50)
60. The gift of knowledge is a far higher gift than that of food and clothes; it is even higher than giving life to a man, because the real life of man consists of knowledge. Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery. (CW(1), p52)
61. The goal may be distant, but awake, arise, and stop not till the goal is reached. (CW(2), p87)
62. The goal of mankind is knowledge. (CW (1), p27)
63. The great king Yudhishthira once said that the most wonderful thing in life is that every moment, we see people dying around us, and yet we think we shall never die. Surrounded by fools on every side, we think we are the only exceptions, the only learned men. (CW(1), p246)
64. The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet. (CW(5), p279)
65. The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making. But, instead of that, we are always trying to polish up the outside. What use in polishing up the outside when there is no inside? The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. (CW(2), p15)
66. The more we learn, the more he find out how ignorant we are, how multiform and multi-sided is this mind of man. (CW(2) p25)
67. The power of concentration is the only key to the treasure-house of knowledge. (CW(2), p391)
68. The powers of the mind are like rays of light dissipated; when they are concentrated, they illumine. This is our only means of knowledge. (CW(1), p129)
69. The search for truth is the expression of strength – not the groping of a weak, blind man. (CW(5), 410)
70. The secret of life is not enjoyment but education through experience. (CW(5), p150)
71. The soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere (limitless), but whose centre is in some body. Death is but a change of centre. (CW(5), p271)
72. The weak have no place here, in this life or in any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. (CW(2), p3)
73. There is only one purpose in the whole of life — education. (CW(8), p431)
74. This “I and mine” causes the whole misery. With the sense of possession comes selfishness, and selfishness brings on misery. (CW(1), p100)
75. This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but be a man, stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find, that is always true. Get hold of yourself. (CW(2) p8)
76. This is the great fact: strength is life, weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery: weakness is death. (CW(2), p3)
77. This world is neither good nor evil; each man manufactures world for himself. (CW(1), p75)
78. This world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong. CW(5), p410)
79. To me, the very essence of education is concentration of mind, not the collecting of facts. If I had to do my education over again, and had any voice in the matter, I would not study facts at all. I would develop the power of concentration and detachment, and then with a perfect instrument, I could collect facts at will. (CW(6), p38)
80. Too much of everything is bad. (CW(7), 482)
81. True progress is slow but sure. (CW(5), p78)
82. Truth is strengthening. Truth is purity, truth is all-knowledge; truth must be strengthening, must be enlightening, must be invigorating. CW(3), p225)
83. Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it. (CW(1), p32)
84. Verily, these three are rare to obtain and come only through the grace of God — human birth, desire to obtain Moksha, and the company of the great-souled ones.” (CW(3), p451)
85. We are everything, ready to do everything, we can do everything, and man must do everything. (CW(3), p376)
86. We are lions in sheep’s clothing of habit, we are hypnotised into weakness by our surroundings. (CW(8), 257)
87. We are responsible for what we are; and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act. (CW(1), p31)
88. We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care of what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live, they travel far. (CW(7), p14)
89. We may go on accumulating things for our physical enjoyment, but only what we earn is really ours. (CW(1) p31)
90. We must have life-building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library. (CW(3), p302)
91. We only get what we deserve. It is a lie when we say, the world is bad and we are good. It can never be so. It is a terrible lie we tell ourselves. (CW(2), p8)
92. What is education? Is it book learning? No. Is it diverse knowledge? Not even that. The training by which the current and expression of will are brought under control and become fruitful is called education. (CW(4), 490)
93. What the world wants is character. (CW(7), p501)
94. What we want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel. We have wept long enough. No more weeping, but stand on your feet and be men. It is a man-making religion that we want. It is man-making theories that we want. It is man-making education all round that we want. (CW(3), p224)
95. Work incessantly, but give up all attachment to work.” “Misery comes through attachment, not through work. (CW(1) , p100)
96. You are infinite, deathless, birthless. Because you are infinite spirit, it does not befit you to be a slave. … Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight! Die if you must. There is none to help you. You are all the world. (CW(1), p461)
97. You are infinite, deathless, birthless. Because you are infinite spirit, it does not befit you to be a slave. … Arise! Awake! Stand up and fight! Die if you must. There is none to help you. You are all the world. (CW(1), p461)
98. You can do anything and everything, you are almighty. (CW(2) p300)
99. You cannot teach a child any more than you can grow a plant. All you can do is on the negative side — you can only help. It is a manifestation from within; it develops its own nature — you can only take away obstructions. (CW(5), p410)
100. You have to grow from inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher than your own soul. (CW(5), 410)

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