Quotes from Bruce Lee

Don't speak negatively about yourself, even as a joke. Your body doesn't know the difference. Words are energy and they cast spells, that's why it's called spelling. Change the way you speak about yourself, and you can change your life.

Satori - in the awakening from a dream. Awakening and self-realization and seeing into one's own being - these are synonymous.

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.

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.

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.

Be like water making its way through crack. Do not be assertive but adjust to the object and you shall find a way round it or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid outward thigs will disclose themselves. Moving be like water. Still be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

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.

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.

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.

Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are the weeds that strange confidence.

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.

To express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself—that, my friend, is very hard to do.

if you want to be immortal live a life worth remembering

Simplicity is the shortest distance between two points.

Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. I'll not willingly offend, nor be easily offended.

In Life There are No Limits, Only Plateaus.

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

Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for a difficult on with the strength to endure it.

The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning, but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it until this moment. Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel.

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.

To free one's self from preconceived notions, prejudices, and conditioned responses is essential to understanding truth and reality.

Give up thinking as though not giving it up. Observe techniques as though not observing.

Anger should be expressed. - Any anger that is not coming out, flowing freely, will turn into sadism, power drive, stammering, and other means of torturing.

A conditioned mind is never a free mind.