Bruce Lee Quotations

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.

Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

I'm not in this world to live up to your expectations and you're not in this world to live up to mine.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

You just wait. I'm going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

Showing off is the fool's idea of glory.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.

Obey the principles without being bound by them.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

The possession of anything begins in the mind.

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception.

Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it. Learn, master, and achieve.

The success of an assailant's attack depends on surprise, and if you're sufficiently alert to prevent a surprise, your counterattack is already halfway to being successful.

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water.

If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love.

Taoist philosophy is essentially monistic. Matter and energy, Yang and Yin, heaven and earth, are conceived of as essentially one or as two coexistent poles of one indivisible whole.

Knowledge earns you power, character earns you respect.

Bring the mind to a sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere.

The three most difficult things in life are: 1. To keep a secret. 2. To forget an injury. 3. To make good use of leisure.

All knowledge leads to self-knowledge.

Effort within the mind further limits the mind, because effort implies struggle towards a goal and when you have a goal, a purpose, an end in view, you have placed a limit on the mind.

...The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity ... the ability to express the utmost with the minimum. It is the halfway cultivation that leads to ornamentation...

Take what's useful, discard what is not.

After all, all knowledge simply means self-knowledge.

What can you take from me which is not already yours?

Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.

The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality -- to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.

Genius: The capacity to see and to express what is simple, simply!

It is not what happens that is success or failure, but what it does to the heart of man.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus and a chair that's not obtained from Craigslist that keeps poking into his back.

Finally, a Jeet Kune Do man who says Jeet Kune Do is exclusively Jeet Kune Do is simply not with it. He is still hung up on his self-closing resistance, in this case anchored down to reactionary pattern, and naturally is still bound by another modified pattern and can move within its limits. He has not digested the simple fact that truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness is never exclusive. Again let me remind you Jeet Kune Do is just a name used, a boat to get one across, and once across it is to be discarded and not to be carried on one's back.

Success is not in reaching the destination, but in making the journey.

For something that is static, fixed, dead, there can be a way or a definite path; but not for anything that is moving and living.

Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.

The abdominal and waist region coordinate all parts of the body and act as the center or generator. Therefore, you can promote the ability to control the body's action and master your will more easily.

Every morning like a scholar at his first class I prepare a blank mind for the day to write upon.

Go toward self-actualization rather than self-image actualization... Search within... for honest self- expression.

It is not a shame to be knocked down by other people. The important thing is to ask when you're being knocked down, 'Why am I being knocked down?' If a person can reflect in this way, then there is hope for this person.

Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are the weeds that strange confidence.

I have always been a martial artist by choice, an actor by profession, but above all, am actualising myself to be an artist of life.

What Is, is more important than What Should Be.

As long as we separate this oneness into two we won't achieve realization.

The happiness that is derived from excitement is like a brilliant fire- soon it will go out.

I don't believe in different ways of fighting now. I mean, unless human beings have 3 arms and 3 legs, then we will have a different way of fighting. But basically we all have two arms and two legs so that is why I believe there should be only one way of fighting and that is no way.

You need emotional content....

Faith makes it possible to achieve that which man's mind can conceive and believe.

I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies.

The primary Reality is not what I think, but that I live, for those also live who do not think.

The more complicated and restricted the method, the less opportunity for expression of one's original sense of freedom.

Boards don't hit back.

Success means doing something sincerely and wholeheartedly.

As long as I can remember I feel I have had this great creative and spiritual force within me that is greater than faith, greater than ambition, greater than confidence, greater than determination, greater than vision. It is all these combined. My brain becomes magnetized with this dominating force which I hold in my hand.

We shall find the answer when we examine the problem, the problem is never apart from the answer, the problem IS the answer, understanding the problem dissolves the problem.

Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart.

...good technique includes quick changes, great variety and speed. It may be a system of reversals much like a concept of God and the Devil. In the speed of events, which one is really in charge?...to put the heart of martial arts inyour own heart and have it be a part of you means total comprehension and the use of a free style. When you have that you will know that there are no limits.

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowled

Let yourself go with dis-ease, be with it, and keep it company. This is the way to be rid of it.

Art requires imagination. It requires Creativity. Creativity requires experience and experience comes from your life. And your life is expressed in your art.

Art lives where absolute freedom is because when it is not, there can be no creativity.

Truth cannot be structured or confined.

I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousn ess.

Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience.

Don’t indulge in any unnecessary, sophisticated moves

The timeless moment. - The "moment" has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.

Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. - To realize that it's just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.

It is true that the mental aspect of kung-fu is the desired end; however, to achieve this end, technical skill must come first.

The future looks extremely bright indeed, with lots of possibilities ahead -- big possibilities. Like the song says, We've just begun.

A self-willed man has no other aim than his own growth.

There are too many stars and too few actors.

Circumstances hell! I make circumstances!

To tolerate is to insult.

Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible.

Success only means doing something sincerely and wholeheartedly. I think life is a process. Through the ages, the end of heroes is the same as ordinary men. They all died and gradually faded away in the memory of man. But when we are still alive, we have to understand ourselves, discover ourselves and express ourselves. In this way, we can progress, but we may not be successful.

Before me now there is only one real fact -- Death. The truth I have been seeking -- this truth is Death. Yet Death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So -- we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace. Because I will conquer death with death.

Practice all movements slow and fast, soft and hard; the effectiveness of Jeet Kune-Do depends on split-second timing and reflexive action, which can be achieved only through repetitious practice.

Self-knowledge is the basis of jeet kune do because it is effective not only for the individual's martial art but also for his life as a human being.

'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.

With every adversity comes a blessing because a shock acts as a reminder to oneself that we must not get stale in routine.

People try to hold onto the sameness. This holding onto prevents growth.

Truth comes when your mind and heart are purged of all sense of striving and you are no longer trying to become somebody; it is there when the mind is very quiet, listening timelessly to everything.

Understanding comes about through feeling, from moment to moment in the mirror of relationship.

The meaning of life is that it is to be lived.

Out of chaos, find simplicity, From discord, find harmony.