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Bruce Lee Quotes
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Lee Jun-fan , known professionally as Bruce Lee, was a Hong Kong and American actor, film director, martial artist, martial arts instructor, philosopher and founder of the martial art Jeet Kune Do. Lee was the son of Cantonese opera star Lee Hoi-chuen. He is widely considered by commentators, critics, media, and other martial artists to be one of the most influential martial artists of all time, and a pop culture icon of the 20th century. He is often credited with helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films.

Lee was born in Chinatown, San Francisco, on November 27, 1940, to parents from Hong Kong and was raised in Kowloon, Hong Kong, with his family until his late teens. He was introduced to the film industry by his father and appeared in several films as a child actor. Lee moved to the United States at the age of 18 to receive his higher education, at the University of Washington, at Seattle and it was during this time that he began teaching martial arts. His Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional Hong Kong martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, sparking a surge of interest in Chinese martial arts in the West in the 1970s. The direction and tone of his films changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in the US, Hong Kong and the rest of the world.

He is noted for his roles in five feature-length films: Lo Wei's The Big Boss and Fist of Fury ; Golden Harvest's Way of the Dragon , directed and written by Lee; Golden Harvest and Warner Brothers' Enter the Dragon and The Game of Death , both directed by Robert Clouse. Lee became an iconic figure known throughout the world, particularly among the Chinese, as he portrayed Chinese nationalism in his films. He trained in the art of Wing Chun and later combined his other influences from various sources, in the spirit of his personal martial arts philosophy, which he dubbed Jeet Kune Do . Lee held dual nationality in Hong Kong and the US. He died in Kowloon Tong on July 20, 1973 at the age of 32.

✵ 27. November 1940 – 20. July 1973   •   Other names 李小龍
Bruce Lee photo
Bruce Lee: 193   quotes 256   likes

Bruce Lee Quotes

“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 book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Variant: 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.
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Lie , Food , Understanding , Water

“Having totality means being capable of following "what is," because "what is" is constantly moving and constantly changing. If one is anchored to a particular view, one will not be able to follow the swift movement of "what is.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Change

“I believe in sleeping.”

Bruce Lee

When asked by his brother Robert if he believed in God, p. 129
The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996)

Sleep

“Nowadays you don't go around on the street kicking people, punching people — because if you do (makes gun shape with hand), well that's it — I don't care how good you are.”

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee interview on the Pierre Berton Show (1971)

People

“Cease negative mental chattering. — If you think a thing is impossible, you'll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 121

Thinking

“Conditioning obstructs our view of reality. — We do not see IT in its suchness because of our indoctrination, crooked and twisted.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 19

Reality

“Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish.”

Bruce Lee

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Faith

“Take inventory of everyone with whom you have contact.”

Bruce Lee

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

“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

In "The Tao of Jeet Kune Do" by Bruce Lee (1975, compiled and published posthumously) and also in Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living (2000) edited by John Little, this is attributed to Lee, perhaps because it was found in his notes, but it is also quoted in precisely this form, from what appear to be translations of Taoist writings in The Religions of Man (1958) by Huston Smith. It is actually from Xinxin Ming, by the Third Chinese Chan [Zen] Patriarch Sengcan.
Misattributed

Truth , Disease , Way , Perfection

“What you HABITUALLY THINK largely determines what you will ultimately become.”

Bruce Lee

Possibly, but more likely derived from the Buddha: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become."
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 120; This probably derives from a Rosicrucian proverb, "As you think, so shall you become", which is itself probably derived from Proverbs 23:7 "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he."

Thinking

“The primary reality is not what I think, but that I live, for those also live who do not think.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 7

Thinking , Reality

“The Moment is freedom. — I couldn't live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 13

Freedom

“Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier.”

Bruce Lee

p 2
Striking Thoughts (2000)

Life

“Choose the positive. — You have choice — you are master of your attitude — choose the POSITIVE, the CONSTRUCTIVE. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 120

Attitude , Faith , Optimism , Success

“When asked what the difference between a karate punch and a kung-fu punch was during his first U. S. screen test in 1965, Bruce Lee replied, “Well, a karate punch is like being hit by an iron bar—whack! A kung-fu punch is like being hit by an iron ball swung on an iron chain with an iron ball attached to the end—it goes WHANG!—and it hurts inside.” Then he stood up and showed exactly what that might look like in a flurry of hands and feet moving so fast they blurred.”

Bruce Lee

Attributed

Hurt

“To be perfectly frank, I really do not.”

Bruce Lee

When asked if he believed in God, p. 128
The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996)

“Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. — To realize that it's just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 120

Parting

“To realize freedom the mind has to learn to look at life, which is a vast movement, without the bondage of time, for freedom lies beyond the field of consciousness — care for watching, but don't stop and interpret "I am free," then you're living in a memory of something that has gone before.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 9

Life , Freedom , Learning , Memory

“Knowledge, surely, is always of time, whereas knowing is not of time. Knowledge is from a source, from accumulation, from conclusion, while knowing is a movement.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), P. 9

Knowledge , Time

“Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, unrhythmic movement, as we as constant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 5

Life , Change

“The timeless moment. — The "moment" has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 9

Time

“Seek to understand the root. — It is futile to argue as to which single leaf, which design of branch, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 11

Flowers , Understanding

“You have to keep your reflexes so that when you want it — it’s there. When you want to move — you are moving. And when you move, you are determined to move! Not accepting even one inch less than 100 percent of your honest feelings. Not anything less than that. So that is the type of thing you have to train yourself into. To become one with your feelings so that, when you think — it is.”

Bruce Lee

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 126

Feeling , Thinking , Training

“Reality is apparent when one ceases to compare. — There is "what is" only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 19

Peace , Reality

“True thusness is without defiling thought; it cannot be known through conception and thought.”

Bruce Lee

Striking Thoughts (2000)

“For a moment
The surrounding utters no sound.
Time ceases.
The Paradise of Dreams come true.”

Bruce Lee

"For A Moment", Bruce Lee's hand-written poem, from Bruce Lee Papers — as quoted in Bruce Lee: Artist of Life (2001) edited by John Little, p. 100

Dreams , Time

“Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.”

Bruce Lee

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

“The Now is indivisible. — Completeness, the now, is an absence of the conscious mind to strive to divide that which is indivisible. For once the completeness of things is taken apart it is no longer complete.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 15

“Even today, I dare not say that I have reached a state of achievement. I'm still learning, for learning is boundless.”

Bruce Lee

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Learning

“Faith makes it possible to achieve that which man's mind can conceive and believe.”

Bruce Lee

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Faith

“Jeet Kune Do favors formlessness so that it can assume all forms and since Jeet Kune Do has no style, it can fit in with all styles.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975), p. 12 <!-- Ohara Publications (July 1993) -->
Context: Jeet Kune Do favors formlessness so that it can assume all forms and since Jeet Kune Do has no style, it can fit in with all styles. As a result, Jeet Kune Do utilizes all ways and is bound by none and, likewise, uses any techniques which serve its end.

“In Jeet Kune Do, it’s not how much you have learned, but how much you have absorbed from what you have learned. It is not how much fixed knowledge you can accumulate, but what you can apply livingly that counts. ‘Being’ is more valued than "doing."”

Bruce Lee

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 117

Knowledge , Learning

“The dualistic philosophy reigned supreme in Europe, dominating the development of Western science. But with the advent of atomic physics, findings based on demonstrable experiment were seen to negate the dualistic theory, and the trend of thought since then has been back to the monistic conception of the ancient Taoists.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p.. 21

Science

“When we hold to the core, the opposite sides are the same if they are seen from the center of the moving circle. I do not experience; I am experience. I am not the subject of experience; I am that experience. I am awareness. Nothing else can be I or can exist.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 22

“The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality — to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 15 - 16

World , Reality , Sense

“Reality is being itself. — It is being itself, in becoming itself. Reality in its isness, the "isness" of a thing. Thus isness is the meaning — having freedom in its primary sense — not limited by attachments, confinements, partialization, complexities.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 19

Reality , Sense , Freedom

“If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love.”

Bruce Lee

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 64

Love

“Taoist philosophy … is essentially monistic. … Matter and energy, Yang and Yin, heaven and earth, are conceived of as essentially one or as two coexistent poles of one indivisible whole.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 23

“Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive; having no opposite, there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. The all illuminating light shines and is beyond the movement of the opposites.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 23

Light

“An instructor should exemplify the things he seeks to teach. It will be of great advantage if you yourself can do all you ask of your students and more.”

Bruce Lee

Part 5 "On training in Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

“A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred — the human law in himself, his own individual will.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 19

Law

“The change is from inner to outer. — We start by dissolving our attitude not by altering outer conditions.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 120

Change

“The intangible represents the real power of the universe. It is the seed of the tangible.”

Bruce Lee

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Universe

“You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don't want to be like "As Confucius say," but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens man that people are different.”

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)

People , Family , Thinking

“True thusness is the substance of thought, and thought is the function of true thusness. There is no thought except that of true thusness. Thusness does not move, but its motion and function are inexhaustible.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 42

“The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”

Bruce Lee

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

Truth

“When you're talking about fighting, as it is, with no rules, well then, baby you'd better train every part of your body!”

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)

Fight , Parting , Baby , Training