Bruce Lee Quotes

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

~ Bruce Lee

You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend.

~ Bruce Lee

Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

~ Bruce Lee

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.

~ Bruce Lee

It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.

~ 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

Bring the mind into sharp focus and make it alert so that it can immediately intuit truth, which is everywhere. The mind must be emancipated from old habits, prejudices, restrictive thought processes and even ordinary thought itself.

~ Bruce Lee

Set patterns, incapable of adaptability, of pliability, only offer a better cage. Truth is outside of all patterns.

~ Bruce Lee

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

~ 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

The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.

~ Bruce Lee

I am not afraid of a person who knows 10000 kicks. But I am afraid of a person who knows one kick but practices it for 10000 times.

~ Bruce Lee

True mastery transcends any particular art. It stems from mastery of oneself--the ability, developed through self-discipline, to be calm, fully aware, and completely in tune with oneself and the surroundings. Then, and only then, can a person know himself.

~ 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.

~ Bruce Lee

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Be water, my friend.

~ Bruce Lee

A conditioned mind is never a free mind.

~ Bruce Lee

Defeat is a state of mind, no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.

~ Bruce Lee

Remember no man is really defeated unless he is discouraged.

~ Bruce Lee

The essential quality of living life lies simply in the living.

~ Bruce Lee

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one

~ Bruce Lee

Life is something for which there is no answer, it must be understood from moment to moment.

~ Bruce Lee

Living exists when life lives through us … life is a living now!

~ Bruce Lee

Memory: Recognizing the value of an alert mind and an alert memory, I will encourage mine to become alert by taking care to impress it clearly with all thoughts I wish to recall and by associating those thoughts with related subjects which I may call to mind frequently.

~ Bruce Lee

It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.

~ 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

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

~ Bruce Lee

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

~ Bruce Lee

If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow -- you are not understanding yourself.

~ Bruce Lee

Relationship is understanding. It is a process of self-revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself -- to be is to be related.

~ 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.

~ Bruce Lee

Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotions, because the body always follows the mind.

~ Bruce Lee

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

~ Bruce Lee

In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.

~ 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

Learn the principles, abide by the principles, and then dissolve the principles.

~ Bruce Lee

Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-conciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.

~ Bruce Lee

Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.

~ Bruce Lee

The best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt on any style. He kicks too good for a Boxer, throws too good for a Karate man, and punches too good for a Judo man.

~ Bruce Lee

Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it.

~ Bruce Lee

If you always put limit 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