“The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve their individuality and grow according to their own law of growth.
If the Parliament of Religions has shown anything to the world it is this: It has proved to the world that holiness, purity and charity are not the exclusive possessions of any church in the world, and that every system has produced men and women of the most exalted character. In the face of this evidence, if some people still dream of the exclusive survival of their own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity them from the bottom of my heart, and point out to them that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: “Help and not Fight”, “Assimilation and not Destruction”, “Harmony and Peace and not Dissension.””
(Address at the final session, Sept. 27, 1893, printed in the Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 1 (15th ed., Calcutta, 1977), pp. 23-24, cited according to the online version: http://www.vivekananda.org/readings.asp)
