— Swami Vivekananda, Complete Works
About this quote
हिन्दी में
काम, काम, काम — यही तुम्हारा ध्येय-वाक्य हो।
What it means
The repetition is the whole content. Nothing is explained, no reason is offered, and the closing instruction — let this be your motto — tells you what kind of sentence it is: something to say to yourself at a particular moment, not a proposition to be examined. Its natural listener is not the idle person but the drifting one, the person still preparing, still consulting, still refining the plan.
Say plainly what it also does not do: the line names no object. Standing alone it can be lifted just as easily into a defence of overwork or of piling up one’s own advantage, and it is now most often quoted that way. The words themselves supply no limit on what the work is for, and a motto is chosen rather than argued — which means the choosing is where the honesty has to go.
What it teaches you
The line has one accurate use: the moment you notice you have spent more time deciding than doing. If you have read three articles about a thing and produced none of it, that is the gap it speaks to. It is not a verdict on hours, and it is no answer to someone already working twelve of them — for that reader the sentence is simply the wrong tool, and repeating it is how exhaustion gets renamed as devotion.
अर्थ और सीख
इस पंक्ति की पूरी शक्ति दोहराव में है — कोई तर्क नहीं दिया गया, और ‘यही तुम्हारा ध्येय-वाक्य हो’ बताता है कि यह विचारने की बात नहीं, स्वयं से कहने की बात है। इसका श्रोता आलसी नहीं, बल्कि तैयारी में उलझा हुआ आदमी है। ईमानदारी से यह भी कहना चाहिए कि वाक्य में काम का उद्देश्य नहीं बताया गया, इसलिए इसे अकेले पढ़कर अधिक खटने का बचाव बना लेना आसान है — इसका ठीक उपयोग उस क्षण है जब सोचने में समय करने से ज़्यादा बीत चुका हो।
Where it comes from
From Swami Vivekananda’s addresses collected in the Complete Works. Vivekananda preached what he called ‘practical Vedanta’ — for him work done selflessly was itself worship, and he had little patience for a spirituality of withdrawal: strength and service were his tests of religion.
