Bruce Lee Quotations

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.

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.

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.

Let an opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let an opponent smash into your flesh and you fracture his bone; let an opponent fracture your bone and you take his life! Do not be concerned with your escaping safely; lay your life before him!

Never waste energy on worries or negative thoughts, all problems are brought into existence -drop them.

Put every great teacher in a room, and they'd agree about everything, but put their disciples in there and they'd argue about everything.

The past is no more; the future not yet. Nothing exists except the here and now. Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at our hands.

The point is the doing of them rather than the accomplishments . There is no actor but the action; there is no experiencer but the experience.

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.

Remember, Life is a journey, not a destination.

Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.

People fear what they do not understand.

The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues.

Get maximum effect from minimum effort.

Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own.

You will never learn anything new unless you are ready to accept yourself with your limitations. You must accept the fact that you are capable in some directions and limited in others, and you must develop your capabilities.

Can you look at a situation without naming it? Naming it, making it a word, causes fear.

If you want to be immortal live a life worth remembering

To see is to be decieved. To hear is to be lied to. To FEEL is to believe.

I refer to my hands, feet and body as the tools of the trade. The hands and feet must be sharpened and improved daily to be efficient.

To be bound by traditional martial art style or styles is the way of the mindless, enslaved martial artist. But to be inspired by the traditional martial art and to achieve further heights is the way of genius.

Knowing is not enough, You must apply

Sincere thought means thought of concentration (quiet awareness). The thought of a distracted mind cannot be sincere

Every man today is the result of his thoughts yesterday.

There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That’s the end. That’s when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day.

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one

When one has no form, one can be all forms.

A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred the human law in himself, his own individual will.

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!!

Styles tend to not only separate men - because they have their own doctrines and then the doctrine became the gospel truth that you cannot change. But if you do not have a style, if you just say: Well, here I am as a human being, how can I express myself totally and completely? Now, that way you won't create a style, because style is a crystallization . That way, it's a process of continuing growth.

Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles-big or small- and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself.

Remember... you are expressing the technique, not doing the technique.

Anxiety is the gap between the NOW and the THEN. So if you are in the NOW, you can't be anxious, because your excitement flows immediately into ongoing spontaneous activity.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

Even today, I dare not say that I have reached a state of achievement. I'm still learning, for learning is boundless.

Your state of mind is everything.

The more aware you become, the more you shed from day to day what you have learned so that your mind is always fresh and uncontaminated by previous conditioning.

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

Real living is living for others.

Practice makes perfect. After a long time of practicing, our work will become natural, skillfull, swift, and steady.

When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.

There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Remember my friend to enjoy your planning as well as your accomplishment, for life is too short for negative energy.

When finger point at moon, don't look at finger or you'll miss the moon.

Like a cobra, your strike should be felt before it is seen.

If you knew you had to fight for your life tomorrow, would you change your training today?

Be happy, but never satisfied.

The best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt on any style. He kicks too good for a Boxer, throws too good for a Karate man, and punches too good for a Judo man.

Loneliness is only an opportunity to cut adrift and find yourself. In solitude you are least alone.

It is better to live as a broken piece of jade, than to live as a useless clay.

We do not become. We simply are.

You will never get any more out of this life than you expect.

If I should die tomorrow, I will have no regrets. I did what I wanted to do. You can't expect more from life.

Where there is no style, there is no slave. Martial Arts mean honestly expressing yourself. No style. No slave.

Low aim, not failure, is the crime.

To change with change is the changeless state

There are no limits...If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

Through my own observations. I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.

We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we create

Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.

The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.

Turn your sparring into play - but always play seriously.

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

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.

A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Not thinking, yet not dreaming. Ready for whatever may come. When the opponent expands, I contract; and when he contracts, I expand. And when there is an opportunity, "I" do not hit, "it" hits all by itself.

‎The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

Never take your eyes off your opponent... even when you bow...

Life is an ever-flowing process and somewhere on the path some unpleasant things will pop up - it might leave a scar, but then life is flowing, and like running water, when it stops it grows stale. Go bravely on, my friend, because each experience teaches us a lesson. Keep blasting because life is such that sometimes it is nice and sometimes it is not.

Don't ignore the five senses in search of a sixth.

What we are after is the root and not the branches. The root is the real knowledge; the branches are surface knowledge. Real knowledge breeds 'body feel' and personal expression; surface knowledge breeds mechanical conditioning and imposing limitation and squelches creativity.

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

A teacher is never a giver of truth; he is a guide, a pointer to the truth that each student must find for himself.

In life, what more can you ask for than to be real?

A person cannot forget someone who is good to them.

I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

Stop wasting time in playing a role or a concept. Instead, learn to ACTUALIZE YOURSELF, your potential.

What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.