Katha Upanishad · as Vivekananda carried it

Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached.

Swami Vivekananda

Strength is life, weakness is death.

You are not broken

Ye are the children of God, the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth — sinners? It is a sin to call a man so; it is a standing libel on human nature.

Come up, O lions, and shake off the delusion that you are sheep. You are souls immortal, spirits free, blest and eternal.

Matter is your servant, not you the servant of matter.

Spirituality is not belief. It is practice.

Not in believing, but in being and becoming.

Religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising.

The frog in the well

That has been the difficulty all the while.

Sectarianism, bigotry, and its horrible descendant, fanaticism, have long possessed this beautiful earth. They have filled the earth with violence, drenched it often and often with human blood, destroyed civilisation and sent whole nations to despair.

Every path is valid

As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee.

The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian.

He was not naive

It is an insult to a starving man to teach him metaphysics.

Chicago · 11 September 1893

Help and not Fight. Assimilation and not Destruction. Harmony and Peace and not Dissension.