SWAMI VIVEKANANDA'S "CALL TO THE YOUTH"
- Arise, awake for your country needs this tremendous sacrifice. It is the young men that will no it. "The young, the energetic, the strong, the well-built, the intellectual" - for them is the task.
- Lay down your comforts, your pleasures, your names, fame or position, nay,even your lives, and make a bridge of human chains over which millions will cross this ocean of life.
- I would rather see every one of you rank atheists than superstitious fools, for the atheist is alive and you can make something out of him. But if superstitions enters, the brain is gone, the brain is softening, degradation has seized upon the life.
- My children must be ready to jump into fire, if needed, to accomplish their work. Now work, work, work! We will stop and compare notes later on. Have patience, perseverance and purity.
- India wants the sacrifice of at least a thousand of her young men - men, mind, and not brutes.
- A hundred thousand men and women, fired with the zeal of holiness, fortified with eternal faith in the Lord, and nerved to lion's courage by their sympathy for the poor and the fallen and the downtrodden, will go over the length and breadth of the land, preaching the gospel of salvation, the gospel of help, the gospel of social raising up the gospel of equality.
- My faith is in the younger generation, the modern generation, out of them will come my workers. They will work out the whole problem, like lions.
- Men, men these are wanted: everything else will be ready, but strong, vigorous, believing young men, sincere to the backbone, are wanted. A hundred such and the world becomes revolutionized.
- We are destined by the Lord to do great things in India.
- Be strong, my young friends, that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to heaven through football than through the study of the Gita. These are bold words; but I have to say them, for I love you. I know where the shoe pinches. I have gained a little experience. You will understand the Gita better with your biceps, your muscles, a little stronger.
- Go from village to village to do good to humanity and to the world at large. Go to hell yourself to buy salvation for others. It is only by doing good to others that one attains one's own good, and it is by leading others to Bhakti and Mukti that one attains them oneself. Take that up; forget your own self for it; be mad over the idea.
- All great undertaking are achieved through mighty obstacles.
- Where are the men who are ready to sacrifice everything, so that this message shall reach every corner of the world? Such heroic souls are wanted to help the spread of truth. Such heroic worlds are wanted t go abroad and help to disseminate the great truths of the Vedanta. The wold wants it; without it the world will be destroyed. The whole of the western world is on a volcano which may burst tomorrow, go to pieces tomorrow. They have drunk deep of the cup of pleasure and found it vanity. Now is the time to work so that India's spiritual ideas many penetrate deep into the west. Up, India, and conquer the world by your spirituality.
