“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round 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
“The more restricted a method, the lesser the opportunity for one's individual freedom of expression.”
―
Bruce Lee
“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
“It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.”
―
Bruce Lee
“physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life.”
―
Bruce Lee
“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
“Now I see that I will never find the light
Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel,
Consuming myself.”
―
Bruce Lee
“The law of non-interference with nature. — The law of non-interference with nature is a basic principle of Taoism [stating] that one should be in harmony with, not rebellion against, the fundamental laws of the universe. Preserve yourself by following the natural bends of things and don’t interfere. Remember never to assert your self against nature; never be in frontal opposition to any problems, but to control it by swinging with it.”
―
Bruce Lee
“The path of self-realisation is the most difficult. -We acquire a sense of worth either by realising our talents, or by keeping busy, or by identifying ourselves with something apart from us - be it a cause, a leader, a group, possessions, and the like. Of the three, the path of self-realisation is the most difficult. It is taken when other avenues to a sense of worth are more or less blocked.”
―
Bruce Lee
“The ideal is unnatural naturalness, or natural unnaturalness. I mean it is a combination of both.
I mean here is natural instinct and here is control. You are to combine the two in harmony.
Not if you have one to the extreme, you'll be very unscientific.
If you have another to the extreme, you become, all of a sudden, a mechanical man
No longer a human being.
It is a successful combination of both.
That way it is a process of continuing growth.
Be water, my friend.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Experiencing is believing. - A fat belly cannot believe that such a thing as hunger exists.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Jeet Kune Do, you see, has no definite lines or boundaries — only those you make yourself.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
―
Bruce Lee
“If I tell you I'm good, probably you will say I'm boasting. But if I tell you I'm not good, you'll know I'm lying.”
―
Bruce Lee
