Bruce Lee: Thing

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

“Instead of buying your children all the things you never had, you should teach them all the things you were never taught. Material wears out but knowledge stays.”

Bruce Lee
Knowledge , Children

“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

“There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing.”

Bruce Lee

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 131
Context: There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That’s the end. That’s when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day.

“Because one does not want to be disturbed, to be made uncertain, he establishes a pattern of conduct, of thought, a pattern of relationship to man etc. Then he becomes a slave to the patter and takes the pattern to be the real thing.”

Bruce Lee

“If there is a God, he is within. You don't ask God to give you things, you depend on God for your inner theme.”

Bruce Lee
God , Dependency

“Balance your thoughts with action. — If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 43

Thinking , Time

“In Science we have finally come back to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who said everything is flow, flux, process. There are no "things."”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 16
Context: In Science we have finally come back to the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus, who said everything is flow, flux, process. There are no "things." NOTHINGNESS in Eastern language is "no-thingness". We in the West think of nothingness as a void, an emptiness, an nonexistence. In Eastern philosophy and modern physical science, nothingness — no-thingness — is a form of process, ever moving.

Science

“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

“The More we value things, the less we value ourselves”

Bruce Lee

“If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”

Bruce Lee

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 13; Unsourced variant: 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.
Context: Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you'll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENNESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

Water

“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

“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 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

“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

“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

“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

“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)

“To contemplate a thing implies maintaining oneself OUTSIDE it, resolved to keep a distance between it and ourselves.”

Bruce Lee

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 30