Push on with the organization. At any cost, we must succeed, we must. No nay in this case. Nothing else is necessary but these — Love, Sincerity, and Patience. What is life but growth, i.e. expansion, i.e. love? Therefore, all love is life, it is the only law of life, all selfishness is death, and this is true here or hereafter. Even if there is no hereafter, it is life to do good, it is death not to do good to others. Ninety per cent of human brutes you see are dead, are ghosts — for none lives, my boys, but he who loves. 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. Struggle, struggle was my motto for the last ten years. Struggle, still say I. When it was all dark I used to say, struggle, when light is breaking in, I still say, struggle. Be not afraid, my children. Look not up in that attitude of fear towards that infinite starry vault as if it would crush you. Wait! In a few hours more the whole of it will be under your feet. Wait, money does not pay, nor name; fame does not pay, nor learning. It is love that pays; it character that cleaves its way through adamantine walls of difficulties. ...
There cannot be any growth without liberty. Our ancestors
freed religious thought, and we have wonderful religion. But they put a heavy chain
on the feet of society. ...
Liberty is the first condition of growth. Just as man must
have liberty to think and speak, so
he must have liberty in food, dress, and marriage and in every other thing, so
long as he does not
injure others. ...
I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here,
giving me eternal bliss in heaven! Pooh! India is to be raised, the poor are to
be fed, education is to be spread, and the evil of priestcraft
is to be removed. ...
Now, this is to be brought about slowly and by only
insisting on our religion and giving liberty to
society. Root up priest craft from the old religion, and you get the best
religion in the world. ...
Work, work, for to work only for the good of others is life.
Source – Letters of Swami Vivekananda (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, 2003), 173–5.