“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

Last update Jan. 25, 2024. History

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Bruce Lee 193
Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and f… 1940–1973

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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.
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A very similar remark was attributed to Nancy Reagan, in The Observer (29 March 1981): "A woman is like a teabag — only in hot water do you realize how strong she is."
Variants:
A woman is like a teabag. You never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water.
A woman is like a tea bag, you can not tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
A woman is like a tea bag; you can't tell how strong she is and how much to trust her until you put her in hot water.
Disputed

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