Selected Quotes By Bruce Lee
"In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand."
Bruce Lee, Belief
"The idea is that flowing water never goes stale, so just keep on flowing."
Bruce Lee, Life
"Boards don't hit back."
Bruce Lee, Anger and Fighting
"Everything you do, if not in a relaxed state will be done at a lesser level than you are proficient. Thus the tensed expert marksman will aim at a level less than his/her student."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can."
Bruce Lee, Life
"The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest."
Bruce Lee, Life
"All knowledge leads to self-knowledge."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"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."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems."
Bruce Lee, Life
"Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul."
Bruce Lee, Art
"Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light."
Bruce Lee, Life
"The more we value things, the less we value ourselves."
Bruce Lee, Wealth
"To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever."
Bruce Lee, Time
"Time means a lot to me because you see I am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing."
Bruce Lee, Time, Happiness
"Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus."
Bruce Lee, Anger and Fighting
"Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick."
Bruce Lee, Life
"The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Showing off is the fool's idea of glory."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Knowledge will give you power, but character respect."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom, Power, Life
"Using no way as a way, having no limitation as limitation."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"Now I see that I will never find the light Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, Consuming myself."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image."
Bruce Lee, Life
"As you think, so shall you become."
Bruce Lee, Life
"If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of."
Bruce Lee, Life, Time
"If there is a God, he is within. You don't ask God to give you things, you depend on God for your inner theme."
Bruce Lee, Belief
"Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life! Do not be concerned with escaping safely- lay your life before him!!"
Bruce Lee, Anger and Fighting
"The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment."
Bruce Lee, Anger and Fighting
"For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime."
Bruce Lee, Criticism
"Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough."
Bruce Lee, Anger and Fighting
"Not being tense but ready. Not thinking but not dreaming. Not being set but flexible. Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it."
Bruce Lee, Confidence
"If you don't want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today."
Bruce Lee, Truth
"The doubters said, "Man can not fly," The doers said, "Maybe, but we'll try," And finally soared In the morning glow while non-believers watched from below."
Bruce Lee, Success
"The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering."
Bruce Lee, Life
"To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities."
Bruce Lee, Opportunities
"It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"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."
Bruce Lee, Love, Friendship
"A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"If you always put limits 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."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer."
Bruce Lee, Intelligence/Wisdom
"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times."
Bruce Lee, Anger and Fighting
"Be happy, but never satisfied."
Bruce Lee, Happiness
"Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one."
Bruce Lee, Belief
"Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.
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."
Bruce Lee, Goals
"I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine."