“Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality-in your own mind
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Bruce Lee
“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.”
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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.”
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Bruce Lee
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward you goal.”
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Bruce Lee
“Use no way as way, make no limitation, limitation.”
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Bruce Lee
“To express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself—that, my friend, is very hard to do.”
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Bruce Lee
“All I can tell you is that at the end, there's nothing left but love.”
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Bruce Lee
“As you think, so shall you become.”
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Bruce Lee
“The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition”
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Bruce Lee
“Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle 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.”
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Bruce Lee
“Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else; it'll spread over into the rest of your life. It'll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being... There are NO limits. There are plateus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.”
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Bruce Lee
“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.”
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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
“Obey the principles without being bound by them.”
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Bruce Lee
“Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.”
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Bruce Lee