Fear comes from uncertainty; we can eliminate the fear within us when we know ourselves better. As the great Sun Tzu said: “When you know yourself and your opponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent, you will win one and lose one. However, when you do not know yourself or your opponent, you will be imperiled every time.
Bruce LeeIf 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 LeeThe great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.
Bruce LeeThe biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues.
Bruce LeeArt requires imagination. It requires Creativity. Creativity requires experience and experience comes from your life. And your life is expressed in your art.
Bruce LeeYou and your opponent are one. There is a coexisting relationship between you. You coexist with your opponent and become his complement, absorbing his attack and using his force to overcome him.
Bruce LeeTruth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.
Bruce LeeThere are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
Bruce LeeThe height of cultivation always runs to simplicity ... the ability to express the utmost with the minimum. It is the halfway cultivation that leads to ornamentation.
Bruce LeeTo live is to express, and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. To live is to express oneself freely in creation.
Bruce LeeThe more aware you become, the more you shed from day to day what you have learned so that your mind is always fresh and uncontaminated by previous conditioning.
Bruce LeeIf people say Jeet Kune Do is different from this or from that, then let the name of Jeet Kune Do be wiped out, for that is what it is, just a name. Please don't fuss over it.
Bruce LeeA good teacher can never be fixed in a routine... each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting. A teacher must never impose this student to fit his favourite pattern; a good teacher functions as a pointer, exposing his student's vulnerability and causing him to explore both internally and finally integrating himself with his being. Martial art should not be passed out indiscriminately.
Bruce LeeLet yourself go with dis-ease, be with it, and keep it company. This is the way to be rid of it.
Bruce LeeIf I should die tomorrow, I will have no regrets. I did what I wanted to do. You can't expect more from life.
Bruce LeeDo not have an attitude, open yourself and focus yourself and express yourself. Reject external form that fails to express internal reality.
Bruce LeeThe future looks extremely bright indeed, with lots of possibilities ahead -- big possibilities. Like the song says, We've just begun.
Bruce LeeWe [tend to] have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We [often feel that we] cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its root in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone; we are not alone when we imitate.
Bruce LeeYou must have complete determination. The worst opponent you can come across is one whose aim has become an obsession. For instance, if a man has decided that he is going to bite off your nose no matter what happens to him in the process, the chances are he will succeed in doing it. He may be severely beaten up, too, but that will not stop him from carrying out his objective. That is the real fighter.
Bruce LeeBecause of styles people are separated. Research your own experience, absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.
Bruce LeeEmpty 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 LeeSelf-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself - to be is to be related.
Bruce LeeThe principle of martial arts is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding and instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and desires.
Bruce LeeTo be what I term a 'quality' human being one has to be transparently real and have the courage to be what he is.
Bruce LeeI fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
Bruce Lee