"Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true"
About this Quote
The intent is both theological and political. Vivekananda was a Hindu monk speaking to a world newly wired by empire, missionary Christianity, and an emerging global public sphere. At the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions, he positioned Vedanta as confident enough to listen. This sentence reads like a diplomatic passport: it legitimizes difference without surrendering conviction.
Subtext: your tradition is not threatened by someone else’s vocabulary. The “thousand different ways” also hints at pedagogy. A teacher doesn’t repeat a lesson because the lesson changes; they repeat because people do. Vivekananda is quietly insisting that spiritual insight has to be translated into the listener’s language, not enforced as a uniform script.
There’s also a strategic edge. For a colonized India often caricatured as superstitious, plural truth becomes a rebuttal: sophistication isn’t rigidity; it’s the capacity to hold complexity without panic. The line flatters neither dogmatists nor cynics. It invites the harder virtue: intellectual humility paired with moral seriousness.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Vivekananda, Swami. (2026, January 15). Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/truth-can-be-stated-in-a-thousand-different-ways-14976/
Chicago Style
Vivekananda, Swami. "Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/truth-can-be-stated-in-a-thousand-different-ways-14976/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/truth-can-be-stated-in-a-thousand-different-ways-14976/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.










