Some of the popular teachings, sayings and quotes of Swami Vivekananda on strength
Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be.
Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be.
Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery.
The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave. None but the brave deserves the fair. None but the bravest deserves salvation.
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. Weakness is death. There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them. There may be a million microbes of misery, floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened. 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. Strength, therefore, is the one thing needful. Strength is the medicine for the world’s disease.
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. Weakness is death. There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them. There may be a million microbes of misery, floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened. 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. Strength, therefore, is the one thing needful. Strength is the medicine for the world’s disease.
Tell This to Your Child from Its Very Birth
The only ism that we require now is this wonderful idea of the soul – its eternal might, its eternal strength, its eternal purity, and its eternal perfection.
If I had a child, I would from its very birth, begin to tell it, “Thou art the Pure One.”
You have read in one of the Puranas that beautiful story of queen Madalasa, how as soon as she has a child she puts her baby with her own hands in the cradle, and how as the cradle rocks to and fro, she begins to sing, “Thou art the Pure One, the Stainless, the Sinless, the Mighty One, the Great One.”
Ay, there is much in that. Feel that you are great and you become great.
From The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, 3.242.
- Be free; hope for nothing from anyone. I am sure, if you look back upon your lives, you will find that you were always trying to get help from others, which never came. All the help that has come was from within yourselves.
- The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of strength that is already within them.
- To succeed you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink ocean”, says the persevering soul, at my will, mountains will crumble up. Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal.
- Death is better than a vegetating ignorant life; it is better to die on the battlefield than to live a life of defeat.
Swami Vivekananda