Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Swami VivekanandaRead
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that while our will is influenced by external factors, there is an element of our consciousness that remains free and independent.
Swami Vivekananda's quote explores the nature of human will and freedom, positing that our actions are often dictated by a chain of causes and effects. However, beneath this layer of determinism lies a deeper aspect of our being that retains true freedom, allowing us to transcend the limitations imposed by our circumstances and make choices based on higher consciousness.
Themes
WillFreedomDeterminismChoiceConsciousness
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on determinism and free will, one might quote Swami Vivekananda to emphasize the inner freedom of the human spirit.
More from Swami Vivekananda
All quotes βRama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, of morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, and above all, the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage Valmiki. No language can be purer, none chaster, none more beautiful, and at the same time simpler, than the language in which the great poet has depicted the life of Rama.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Hinduism threw away Buddhism after taking its sap. The attempt of all the Southern Acharyas was to effect a reconciliation between the two. Shankaracharya's teaching shows the influence of Buddhism. His disciples perverted his teaching and carried it to such an extreme point that some of the later reformers were right in calling the Acharya's followers "crypto-buddhists".
Swami VivekanandaRead
According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already.
Swami VivekanandaRead
I have come to deal with principles. I have only to preach that God comes again and again, and that He came in India as Krishna, Rama, and Buddha, and that He will come again. It can almost be demonstrated that after each 500 years the world sinks, and a tremendous spiritual wave comes, and on the top of the wave is a Christ.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Salvation means knowing the truth. We do not become anything; we are what we are. Salvation [comes] by faith and not by work. It is a question of knowledge! You must know what you are, and it is done. The dream vanishes. This you [and others] are dreaming here. When they die, they go to [the] heaven [of their dream]. They live in that dream, and [when it ends], they take a nice body [here], and they are good people.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Similar quotes
It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
Alexis De TocquevilleRead
We have become 99 percent money mad. The method of living at home modestly and within our income, laying a little by systematically for the proverbial rainy day which is due to come, can almost be listed among the lost arts.
George Washington CarverRead
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in men, than any other association of men.
Clarence DarrowRead
People are looking for a simplicity in their fictional worlds where good and evil are clearly delineated, that you can't find in the real world, and that provides an enormous comfort - and that, I think, has an awful lot to do with the reason fantasy is so popular.
Robert J. SawyerRead
People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.
Blaise PascalRead
Laurel and Hardy. That's John and Yoko, and we stand a better chance under that guise, because all the serious people, like Martin Luther King, and Kennedy, and Gandhi, got shot.
John LennonRead