Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotations

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action, which produces further confusion, further misery.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely - the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

This is love: the flowering of love is meditation.

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

There is no need to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.

It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Learning is the very essence of humility . . .

You can only hear clearly when you sit quietly, when you give your attention. Nor can you have order if you are not free to watch, if you are not free to listen, if you are not free to be considerate. This problem of freedom and order is one of the most difficult and urgent problems in life. It is a very complex problem. It needs to be thought over much more than mathematics, geography, or history.

Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.

Only when the mind is tranquil-through self-knowledge and not through imposed self-discipline-only then, in that tranquillity, in that silence, can reality come into being. It is only then that there can be bliss, that there can be creative action.

Let the mind be empty, and not filled with the things of the mind. Then there is only meditation, and not a meditor who is meditating . . . The mind must be clear, without movement, and in the light of that clarity the timeless will be revealed.

Goodness, generosity, or love does not come into being save through the search for reality.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action, which is relationship.

If I do not understand myself, the whole complexity of myself, I have no basis for thinking.

A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.

There is no partial sensitivity; either it is the state of one's whole being, total consciousness or it is not there at all

As long as the mind is in conflict-blaming, resisting, condemning-there can be no understanding. If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.

The intellect is not the means of creation, and creation does not take place through the functioning of the intellect; on the contrary, there is creation when the intellect is silent.

The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love.

The very attention given to finding out if the mind can be completely quiet is quietness.

The Creative knows the great beginnings. The Receptive completes the finished things. The Creative is decided and therefore shows to men the easy. The Receptive is yielding and therefore shows to men the simple. Learning is movement from moment to moment.

Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following.

If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.

To change the world, we must begin with ourselves.

...it is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods-you have nothing but images. The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships...

Our conflict is in relationship, at all levels of our existence; and the understanding of this relationship, completely and extensively, is the only real problem that each one has.

To be is to be related.

Freedom lies beyond the field of consciousness.

Achieve order within yourself...an inward tranquility which knows no disturbance at any moment...in the daily life of the home and the office.

Mere isolation in an enclosing idea is not a release from conflict.

Fear exists in the process of accumulation and belief in something is part of the accumulative process.

But our minds are bound to the yardstick of yesterday, today and tomorrow, and with that yardstick we try to inquire into the unknown, to measure that which is not measurable.

One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be.

When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge.

Through self-knowledge you begin to find out what is God, what is truth, what is that state which is timeless. In self-knowledge is the whole universe; it embraces all the struggles of humanity.

The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another.

Freedom lies outside the pattern of society; but to be free of that pattern you have to understand the whole content of it, which is to understand your own mind.

And the point is, is it possible for the mind to be totally free from suffering and yet not become indifferent, callous, irresponsible, but to have that passion, the intensity, the energy that freedom brings, freedom from suffering.

Is it possible to live in this world without the operation of will?

Can I live a life, daily life, without sense of self-concern?

No book can teach you about yourself, no psychologist, none of the professors or philosophers. What they can teach you is what they think you are or what they think you should be.

Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness, and conflict comes when you seek consolation, forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions.

The thought is not the thing.

A mind that is afraid withers away; it cannot function properly.

I admire and respect the tenacity, courage, and patience of the unenlightened in the face of so much overwhelming evidence

Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on.

Are you aware of the significance of every thought, of every reaction that you happen to have?

Meditation is the process of understanding your own mind.

In the search for reality, energy creates its own discipline. But mere discipline, without full comprehension of all this, has no meaning, it is a most destructive thing.

If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever.

We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.

If you are lucky and work very hard, you may someday get to experience freedom from the known.

My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free.

Religion, it seems to me, has nothing whatsoever to do with any belief, with any priest, with any church or so-called sacred book. The state of the religious mind can be understood only when we begin to understand what beauty is; and the understanding of beauty must be approached through total aloneness.

Belief conditions experience, and experience then strengthens belief.

It is more important to find out what you are giving to society than to ask what is the right means of livelihood.

If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.

Only when your hearts are empty of the things of the mind, is there love. Then you will know what it is to love without separation, without distance, without time, without fear.

There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery.

Passion is a rather frightening thing because if you have passion you don't know where it will take you.

[on the secret to a happy, content life] Do you want to know what my secret is? I don’t mind what happens.

Till the false is seen as false, truth is not.

Doesn't becoming imply time?

To be absolutely nothing is to be beyond measure.

It is only the dull, sleepy mind that creates and clings to habit. A mind that is attentive from moment to moment - attentive to what it is saying, attentive to the movement of its hands, of its thoughts, of its feelings - will discover that the formation of further habits has come to an end.

Intelligence is not discernment and judgment or critical evaluation.

The unknown is not measurable by the known. Time cannot measure the timeless, the eternal, that immensity which has no beginning and no end... when we try to measure something which is not measurable, we only get caught in words.

The real student is studying, learning, inquiring, exploring, not just until he is twenty or twenty-five, but throughout life.

Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself-these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society.

And for this you must have quiet and solitude. But society does not allow you to have them. You must be with people, outwardly active at all costs. If you are alone you are considered antisocial or peculiar, or you are afraid of your own loneliness.

That is, sir, there can only be communication, communion, when you and I are on the same level, and with the same intensity, at the same time.

There is not first understanding and then action. When you understand, that very understanding is action.

This is what I am, and I am going to understand this.

A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine. You suffer patiently, submitting to the cruelties of environment, when you, individually, have the possibilities of changing them.

You can look only when the mind is completely quiet.

The very desire to be certain,to be secure,is the beginning of bondage.It's only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty,and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery.

Intelligence is the seeing of what is.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.

The real is near, you do not have to seek it; and a man who seeks truth will never find it. Truth is in what is - and that is the beauty of it. But the moment you conceive it, the moment you seek it, you begin to struggle; and a man who struggles cannot understand. That is why we have to be still, observant, passively aware.

Meditation is not a withdrawal from life. Meditation is a process of understanding oneself.