Swami Vivekananda's Quotes On Adam ~ Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Adam got his knowledge
through the tasting of the forbidden fruit.

—Swami Vivekananda

We all know the story of Adam, or the story of fallen Adam. In this article we'll make a collection of Swami Vivekananda's quotes and comments on Adam.

Adam got his knowledge through the tasting of the forbidden fruit.^[Source]
If a man all his life desires to meet his forefathers, he gets them all from Adam downwards, because he creates them.^[Source]
In the first or dualistic stage, man knows he is a little personal soul, John, James, or Tom; and he says, "I will be John, James, or Tom to all eternity, and never anything else." As well might the murderer come along and say, "I will remain a murderer for ever." But as time goes on, Tom vanishes and goes back to the original pure Adam.^[Source]
Knowledge is a lower state; Adam's fall was when he came to "know". Before that he was God, he was truth, he was purity.^[Source]
One idea of religion has been that the whole world was born because Adam ate the apple, and there is no way of escape.^[Source]
The older I grow, the more I see behind the idea of the Hindus that man is the greatest of all beings. So say the Mohammedans too. The angels were asked by Allah to bow down to Adam. Iblis did not, and therefore he became Satan.^[Source]
This is the one fact that comes out of every scripture and of every mythology that the man that is, is a degeneration of what he was. This is the kernel of truth within the story of Adam's fall in the Jewish scripture. This is again and again repeated in the scriptures of the Hindus; the dream of a period which they call the Age of Truth, when no man died unless he wished to die, when he could keep his body as long as he liked, and his mind was pure and strong. There was no evil and no misery; and the present age is a corruption of that state of perfection.^[Source]
When Adam fell, he fell from purity.^[Source]
You find there the allegorical statement that the first man Adam was pure, and that his purity was obliterated by his evil deeds afterwards. It is clear from this allegory that they thought that the nature of the primitive man was perfect. The impurities that we see, the weaknesses that we feel, are but superimpositions on that nature, and the subsequent history of the Christian religion shows that they also believe in the possibility, nay, the certainty of regaining that old state. This is the whole history of the Bible, Old and New Testaments together. So with the Mohammedans: they also believed in Adam and the purity of Adam, and through Mohammed the way was opened to regain that lost state.^[Source]