— Swami Vivekananda, Lectures from Colombo to Almora, 1897; adapted from Katha Upanishad 1.3.14
About this quote
हिन्दी में
उठो, जागो, और तब तक मत रुको जब तक लक्ष्य प्राप्त न हो जाए।
What it means
Three verbs, and the weight falls on the last. Arise and awake take a word each; the rest of the sentence is a prohibition — stop not — and that is where the difficulty actually lives. Despite how it is used, this is not primarily a wake-up call. It is an instruction against quitting somewhere in the middle, addressed to people who have already got up.
It is worth being honest about what it does not supply. Till the goal is reached assumes the goal is already chosen and worth reaching, and the line offers no test for that — which is exactly why it fits equally well above a school blackboard, a gym mirror and a sales target. Persistence is the whole of its advice, and persistence in the wrong direction is the one failure it cannot warn you about.
What it teaches you
Audit the things you abandoned at the halfway mark rather than the ones you never began — that is the failure this sentence addresses. For each, separate two reasons honestly: the goal turned out to be wrong, or the work simply stopped being interesting. Only the second is what stop not is about; the first is information, not weakness. And since the line will not choose a goal for you, do that choosing somewhere else, before you borrow its momentum.
अर्थ और सीख
तीन क्रियाओं में असली भार आखिरी पर है — ‘मत रुको’; उठना और जागना तो शुरुआत भर है, कठिनाई बीच रास्ते में हार न मानने की है। ध्यान दीजिए कि यह पंक्ति लक्ष्य चुनने में कोई मदद नहीं करती, वह काम आपको पहले खुद करना है। सीख: जो काम आपने शुरू ही नहीं किए उनकी नहीं, उनकी सूची बनाइए जो आधे में छूट गए, और देखिए कि वे लक्ष्य गलत निकलने से छूटे या सिर्फ ऊब जाने से।
Where it comes from
Vivekananda’s clarion call, repeated throughout his lectures (notably the 1897 talks collected in Lectures from Colombo to Almora). He adapted it from the Katha Upanishad (1.3.14): uttishthata jagrata prapya varan nibodhata — ‘Arise, awake, approach the great and learn.’
It became the unofficial motto of his mission, and remains on the walls of schools across India.
