Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment.

Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.

The man who is seeking truth is free of all societies and cultures.

There is always great beauty, not of images, feeling or thought. Beauty is neither thought nor feeling; it has nothing whatsoever to do with emotion or sentiment. There is fear. Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. There, at that actual moment, there is total attention at the moment of danger, physical or psychological.

There is no partial sensitivity; either it is the state of one's whole being, total consciousness or it is not there at all

It is astonishingly beautiful and interesting, how thought is absent when you have an insight. Thought cannot have an insight.

Freedom is now or never.

I hold that all the Teachers of the world have attained that Life which is the fulfilment of life. Hence, whenever anyone enters that Life, which is the culmination of all life, then he is ipso facto the Buddha, the Christ, the Lord Maitreya, because there is no distinction there.

I should say that all compromise is a "stepping down" of the Truth, is trying to reduce something which cannot be reduced, and that for anyone who has understood life these compromises are impossible.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.

Everyone must go through all experiences but they need not go through them all in reality -they can do it vicariously, by imagination.

The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love.

The purpose of having the title 'World-Teacher' is to acknowledge, to show, the condition of mind and heart when you have achieved. It is like saying: 'I have painted a picture'. It is like saying: 'I have written a poem'. It is an assertion of the fact of attainment, rather than the narrow understanding that is given to labels and phrases. What the phrase indicates is of importance.

It is intelligence that brings order, not discipline.

Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself-these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society.

Teaching is not the mere imparting of information but the cultivation of an inquiring mind which will penetrate into the question of what is religion and not merely accept the established religions, churches, and rituals.

The mind has to be empty to see clearly.

Contentment is not happiness. Contentment is stagnation and decay, whereas happiness is life and growth.

You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of the truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to help him organize it."

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely - the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.

If you have no love, do what you will - go after all the gods on earth, do all the social activities, try to reform the poor, the politics, write books, write poems - you are a dead human being. Without love your problems will increase, multiply endlessly.

Do you decide to observe? Or do you merely observe?

If you have a great many desires, you will gradually eliminate them one by one, until you allow certain desires to dominate and the others to die away.

Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.

Love is a state of being, and in that state, the 'me', with its identifications, anxieties, and possessions is absent. Love cannot be, as long as the activities of the self, of the 'me', whether conscious or unconscious, continue to exist.

Of course it is better to emphasize the unity of human beings rather than to emphasize the diversity of forms, that is to say, the man and the woman separately. If you have separate organizations for men and women you will tend to set them apart from each other, which is what often happens at present and is absurd!

Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?

Meditation is the action of silence.

The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.

As long as the mind is in conflict-blaming, resisting, condemning-there can be no understanding. If I want to understand you, I must not condemn you, obviously.

Most people are unhappy; and they are unhappy because there is no love in their hearts.

The intellect is not the means of creation, and creation does not take place through the functioning of the intellect; on the contrary, there is creation when the intellect is silent.

I can only insist that understanding, not blind belief, should be the goal.

To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer. The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

To be is to be related.

To go far you must begin near, and the nearest step is the most important one.

Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another - and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not.

The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.

When you say that I have followers, let me assure you that I do not want followers, nor would I ever encourage the idea of following.

Without knowing yourself, there is no peace.

I admire and respect the tenacity, courage, and patience of the unenlightened in the face of so much overwhelming evidence

If you seem something that is true and do not act then you are wasting your life. And life is too precious. It is all that we have.

When inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learned without experiencing it.

The society in which we live is the result of our psychological state.

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.

Nothing can disturb the calm peace of my soul.

One does not concern oneself with the expressions, but rather with life. You are looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope when you look at the expressions of life.