WE CANNOT REMAIN WITHOUT ACTION FOR A MOMENT - THAT IS RELIGION

We cannot remain without action for a moment. Act! But just as when your neighbour asks you, "Come and help me!" have you exactly the same idea when you are helping yourself. No more. Your body is of no more value than that of John. Don't do anything more for your body than you do for John. That is religion.

- Swami Vivekananda
(Delivered in San Francisco, on May 29, 1900)
 The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 1/Lectures And Discourses/The Gita III

THAT IS THE WHOLE OF RELIGION

 . . . Try to be pure and unselfish — that is the whole of religion. . .

- Swami Vivekananda
14th April, 1891.The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 6/Epistles - Second Series/XXXV Govinda Sahay

ARE THE SAME METHODS OF INVESTIGATION, WHICH WE APPLY TO SCIENCES AND KNOWLEDGE OUTSIDE, TO BE APPLIED TO THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION ?

The question is: Is there a way out? To put it in a more concrete form: Is religion to justify itself by the discoveries of reason, through which every other science justifies itself? Are the same methods of investigation, which we apply to sciences and knowledge outside, to be applied to the science of Religion?

In my opinion this must be so, and I am also of opinion that the sooner it is done the better. If a religion is destroyed by such investigations, it was then all the time useless, unworthy superstition; and the sooner it goes the better. I am thoroughly convinced that its destruction would be the best thing that could happen. All that is dross will be taken off, no doubt, but the essential parts of religion will emerge triumphant out of this investigation. Not only will it be made scientific — as scientific, at least, as any of the conclusions of physics or chemistry — but will have greater strength, because physics or chemistry has no internal mandate to vouch for its truth, which religion has.

- Swami Vivekananda
[ REASON AND RELIGION ]
(Delivered in England)