Bruce Lee: Doing

Bruce Lee was Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker. Explore interesting quotes on doing.
Bruce Lee: 386   quotes 256   likes

“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
Way , Water

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it.”

Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee radio interview with Ted Thomas
Bruce Lee
Context: When I look around, I always learn something: to be always yourself, and to express yourself, to have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
Context: When I look around I always learn something, and that is to be yourself always, express yourself, and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate him. Now that seems to be the prevalent thing happening in Hong Kong, like they always copy mannerism, but they never start from the root of his being and that is, how can I be me?

Faith , Personality

“Do not be concerned with escaping safely — lay your life before him.”

Bruce Lee

As quoted in Bruce Lee : Artist of Life (1999) edited by John R. Little, p. 192
Context: Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely — lay your life before him.

Life

“My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 2
Context: Emptiness the starting point. — In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup. My friend, drop all your preconceived and fixed ideas and be neutral. Do you know why this cup is useful? Because it is empty.

Idea

“Be aware of doing your best to understand the ROOT in life, and realize the DIRECT and the INDIRECT are in fact a complementary WHOLE.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 11
Context: Be aware of doing your best to understand the ROOT in life, and realize the DIRECT and the INDIRECT are in fact a complementary WHOLE. It is to see things as they are and not to become attached to anything — to be unconscious meant to be innocent of the working of a relative (empirical) mind — where there is no abiding of thought anywhere on anything — this is being unbound. This not abiding anywhere is the root of our life.

Life , Understanding

“I do not think unless I think of things — and there I find myself.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 21
Context: If thought exists, I who think and the world about which I think also exist; the one exists but for the other, having no possible separation between them. Therefore, the world and I are both in active correlation; I am that which sees the world, and the world is that which is seen by me. I exist for the world and the world exists for me. … One sure and primary and fundamental fact is the joint existence of a subject and of its world. The one does not exist without the other. I acquire no understanding of myself except as I take account of objects, of the surroundings. I do not think unless I think of things — and there I find myself.

Thinking

“To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to spend or waste, and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 10

Decision , Time

“Everything you do, if not in a relaxed state will be done at a lesser level than you are proficient. Thus the tensed expert marksman will aim at a level less than his/her student.”

Bruce Lee

“Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do (1975), p. 25

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“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

“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

“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)