“The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.”
―
Bruce Lee
“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
“To see a thing uncolored by one’s own personal preferences and desires is to see it in its own pristine simplicity.”
―
Bruce Lee
“The primary reality is not what I think, but that I live, for those also live who do not think. Although this living may not be a real living. God! What contradictions when we seek to join in wedlock life and reason!”
―
Bruce Lee
“...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 plateaus, 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.”
―
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”
―
Bruce Lee
“Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality-in your own mind
―
Bruce Lee
“The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart; if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.”
―
Bruce Lee
“But neither can you condemn nor justify and yet be extraordinarily alive as you walk on.
You can never invite the wind but you must leave the window open.”
―
Bruce Lee
“There is no mystery about my style. My movements are simple, direct and non-classical. The extraordinary part of it lies in its simplicity. Every movement in Jeet Kune-Do is being so of itself. There is nothing artificial about it. I always believe that the easy way is the right way.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Put 'going the extra mile' to work as part of one's daily habit.”
―
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
“If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo. ”
―
Bruce Lee
“The More we value things, the less we value ourselves”
―
Bruce Lee