Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Swami VivekanandaRead
There is no virtue higher than non-injury.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of non-violence as a fundamental moral principle.
Swami Vivekananda's assertion that there is no virtue higher than non-injury reflects the core ethical principle of ahimsa, which promotes active respect for all living beings. This philosophy encourages individuals to lead lives that avoid causing harm and to cultivate compassion and kindness as paramount virtues in our conduct towards others.
In practice
During a speech on ethical leadership, one might quote Vivekananda to emphasize the importance of treating others with respect.
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.
War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.
Through forgiveness, which essentially means recognizing the insubstantiality of the past and allowing the present moment to be as it is, the miracle of transformation happens not only within but also without.
I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.
What you resist persists. And only what you look at, and own, can disappear. You make it disappear by simply changing your mind about it.
Every man is a moon; he has a side no one sees.
We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.
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