Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Swami VivekanandaRead
The idea of God grew side by side with the idea of materialism.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that the concept of God developed alongside the rise of materialistic views of the world.
Swami Vivekananda's quote reflects on the coexistence of spiritual beliefs and materialistic perspectives throughout history. It implies that as societies began to place higher value on physical possessions and empirical understanding, the notion of a divine presence or God simultaneously evolved, highlighting a dynamic interplay between faith and materialism in human thought.
Themes
GodMaterialismPhilosophySpiritualityBelief
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on the balance between spirituality and consumerism, one might use this quote to emphasize the dual nature of human experience.
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
The type and formula of most schemes of philanthropy or humanitarianism is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall be made to do for D. The radical vice of all these schemes, from a sociological point of view, is that C is not allowed a voice in the matter, and his position, character, and interests, as well as the ultimate effects on society through C's interests, are entirely overlooked. I call C the Forgotten Man.
William Graham SumnerRead
There is no point asserting and reasserting what the heart cannot believe.
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynRead
No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.
William OslerRead
So it is clear that the search for what is just is a search for the mean; for the law is the mean.
AristotleRead
When I was young I had an elderly friend who used often to ask me to stay with him in the country. He was a religious man and he read prayers to the assembled household every morning. But he had crossed out in pencil all the passages that praised God. He said that there was nothing so vulgar as to praise people to their faces and, himself a gentleman, he could not believe that God was so ungentlemanly as to like it.
W. Somerset MaughamRead
The knight departing for new adventures offends his lady, yet she has nothing but contempt for him if he remains at her feet.
Simone De BeauvoirRead