Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Swami VivekanandaRead
Religion is the life of India, religion is the language of this country, the symbol of all its movements.
Interpretation
Religion is fundamental to India's identity and cultural movements.
This quote by Swami Vivekananda emphasizes the integral role of religion in the life and identity of India. He suggests that religion serves not only as a guiding force for individuals but also as a unifying language that reflects the spirit and aspirations of the nation as a whole, influencing its social and cultural dynamics.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the impact of religion on cultural identity.
Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Rama, 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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
No man can attain to the knowledge of God but by humility. The way to mount high is to descend.
What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman.
I thought of the people before me who had looked down at the river and gone to sleep beneath it. I wondered about them. I wondered how they had done it--it, the physical act. I simply wondered about the dead because their days had ended and I did not know how I would get through mine.
They stormed and jeered at one another in long meaningless words of about twenty syllables each.
The celebrity syndrome. When people forget who they are and start to believe what other people say about them.
No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field.
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