Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

If I do not understand myself, the whole complexity of myself, I have no basis for thinking.

But our minds are bound to the yardstick of yesterday, today and tomorrow, and with that yardstick we try to inquire into the unknown, to measure that which is not measurable.

Life in the savage appears different from the life that dwells in you, different in its expression, but it is all one Life. Anyone who has not fulfilled that life must step down the Truth, and when he does that, he is unconsciously betraying the Truth.

A mind that is always comparing, always measuring, will always engender illusion. If I am measuring myself against you, who are clever, more intelligent, I am struggling to be like you and I am denying myself as I am. I am creating an illusion.

The real student is studying, learning, inquiring, exploring, not just until he is twenty or twenty-five, but throughout life.

As long as the mind is seeking to fill itself, it will always be empty. When the mind is no longer concerned with filling its own emptiness, then only does that emptiness cease to be.

Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In our relationships each of us builds an image about the other, and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves.

Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.

Order cannot possibly be brought about through conformity to a pattern, under any circumstances.

In this country, unfortunately, as all over the world, we care so little, we have no deep feeling about anything. Most of us are intellectual-intellectuals in the superficial sense of being very clever, full of words and theories about what is right and what is wrong, about how we should think, what we should do. Mentally we are highly developed, but inwardly there is very little substance or significance; and it is this inward substance that brings about true action, which is not action according to an idea.

There are laws in some countries, I believe, which prohibit anyone from following you in the street, and if someone does, he can be arrested and put into prison. So, spiritually, I wish there were a police system which would put people into a spiritual prison for following others. In fact, it does happen automatically.

To come upon love without seeking it is the only way to find it.

The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

Constantly to seek the purpose of life is one of the odd escapes of man. If he finds what he seeks it will not be worth that pebble on the path.

Transformation can only take place immediately; the revolution is now, not tomorrow.

Free yourself from the psychological structure of society, which is to free yourself from the essence of conflict.

To understand what is right meditation there must be an awareness of the operation of one's own consciousness, and then there is complete attention.

Can I reject everything my brain experienced? Is intellectual understanding any understanding at all?

We should awaken feelings of respect for each other. In other words, awaken the desire to kill selfishness.

Now, is it possible not to be hurt at all? Because the consequences of being hurt are the building of a wall around oneself, withdrawing in one's relationship with others in order not to be hurt more. In that there is fear and a gradual isolation. Now, we are asking: Is it possible not only to be free of past hurts but also never to be hurt again?

Ugliness is a lack of harmony, assuredly. And evil is the same thing of course.

Freedom comes with self-knowledge, when the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances it has created for itself.

The only freedom is the freedom from the known.

If you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part.

Analysis does not transform consciousness.

There is an efficiency inspired by love which goes far beyond and is much greater than the efficiency of ambition; and without love, which brings an integrated understanding of life, efficiency breeds ruthlessness.

You may repeat the most marvelous poems. And that is not worth a cent if you don't live it.

Some go to sleep in an organization and never wake up, and those who do wake up put them selves to sleep again by joining another. This acquisitive movement is called expansion of thought, progress.

Belief creates its own experience; therefore, such an experience is not true.

You cannot ask which system is the better because you cannot standardize one system for the whole of the world. You cannot have one stereotyped code of morality for every country. One system may work very well in one country and very badly in another. You cannot grow a tropical flower in a cold climate.

Fear is what prevents the flowering of the mind.

Why haven't we, with all our cunning, experience, resolved this problem of fear completely? Isn't fear the cause of the 'me'?

Is insight dependent on a material process? Has insight a cause?

The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.

Till the false is seen as the false, truth is not.

How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on... man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines.

What has validity is your living, not what happens tomorrow.

When you once see something as false which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human, then you can never go back to it.

You cannot say that all experience is of equal value for all people.

It is necessary for all of us to awaken in ourselves this spirit of cooperation, for then it will not be a mere plan or agreement which causes us to work together, but an extraordinary feeling of togetherness, the sense of joy in being and doing together without any thought of reward or punishment.

The description is not the described.

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.

You cannot prevent a man getting drunk if he wishes to do so, but when he becomes a nuisance, then you interfere.

To learn about oneself, a living thing, you have to watch, learn anew each minute.

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.

Freedom lies beyond the field of consciousness.

Find out what it means to die - not physically, that's inevitable - but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known, the known pleasures, the known fears. Die to that every minute and you will see what it means to die so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent, so that there is incarnation not in a next life, but the next day.