“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
“The aim of education. — Education: to discover but not merely to imitate. Learning techniques without inward experiencing can only lead to superficiality.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Never try to copy a successful personality.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Remembrance is the only paradise out of which we cannot be driven away. Pleasure is the flower that fades, remembrance is the lasting perfume. Remembrances last longer than present realities; I have preserved blossoms for many years, but never fruits.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”
―
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
“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
“There was nothing haphazard about Bruce’s training regime, neither was he particularly “lucky” in having started out with natural physical gifts. The greatest talents that Bruce brought to realizing his dreams were intelligence and curiosity (hand in hand, a powerful combination), dedication and perseverance (stick-to-itiveness even in the face of intervening obstacles), and focus (enjoying the journey as much as the destination).”
―
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 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
“To express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself—that, my friend, is very hard to do.”
―
Bruce Lee
“The disease of philosophy. - Philosophy is itself the disease for which it pretends to be the cure: the wise man does not pursue wisdom but lives his life, and therein precisely does his wisdom lie.”
―
Bruce Lee
“When the opponent expand, I contract. When he contracts, I expand. And, when there is an opportunity, I do not hit - it hits all by itself.”
―
Bruce Lee
“Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.”
―
Bruce Lee
“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.”
―
Bruce Lee
