Bruce Lee Quotes

201 Sourced Quotes

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

Bruce Lee
Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

Bruce Lee
Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.

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

Bruce Lee
In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.

Bruce Lee
It is useless to try to stir the dirt Out of the muddy water, As it will become murkier. But leave it alone, And if it should be cleared; It will become clear by itself.

Bruce Lee
To 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 Lee
I have always been a martial artist by choice, an actor by profession, but above all, am actualising myself to be an artist of life.

Bruce Lee
People try to hold onto the sameness. This holding onto prevents growth.

Bruce Lee
Never waste energy on worries or negative thoughts, all problems are brought into existence -drop them.

Bruce Lee
Prosperity is apt to prevent us from examining our conduct; but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is beneficial to us.

Bruce Lee
I have the absolute confidence not to be number two, but then I have enough sense to realize that there can be no number one.

Bruce Lee
As an instructor, you must be able to distinguish between poor performance caused by lack of ability or aptitude on the part of the student and poor performance caused by lack of effort. You should treat the first with patience and the latter with firmness. You must never apply sarcasm and ridicule.

Bruce Lee
Concentration is the ROOT of all the higher abilities in man.

Bruce Lee
The timeless moment. — The "moment" has no yesterday or tomorrow. It is not the result of thought and therefore has no time.

Bruce Lee
Concepts vs. self-actualization. — Instead of dedicating your life to actualize a concept of what you should be like, ACTUALIZE YOURSELF. The process of maturing does not mean to become a captive of conceptualization. It is to come to the realization of what lies in our innermost selves.

Bruce Lee
There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

Bruce Lee
To realize freedom the mind has to learn to look at life, which is a vast movement, without the bondage of time, for freedom lies beyond the field of consciousness — care for watching, but don't stop and interpret "I am free," then you're living in a memory of something that has gone before.

Bruce Lee
'What is' is more important than 'what should be.' Too many people are looking at 'what is' from a position of thinking 'what should be'.

Bruce Lee
The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.

Bruce Lee
Voidness is that which stands right in the middle between this and that. The void is all-inclusive; having no opposite, there is nothing which it excludes or opposes. The all illuminating light shines and is beyond the movement of the opposites.

Bruce Lee
The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness; only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.

Bruce Lee
More and more I believe in the fact that you have two hands and two legs, and the thing is how to make good use of yourself - and that's about it.

Bruce Lee
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
Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image

Bruce Lee
Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are the weeds that strange confidence.

Bruce Lee
Seek to understand the root. — It is futile to argue as to which single leaf, which design of branch, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming.

Bruce Lee
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
In Jeet Kune Do, it's not how much you have learned, but how much you have absorbed from what you have learned. It is not how much fixed knowledge you can accumulate, but what you can apply livingly that counts. 'Being' is more valued than "doing".

Bruce Lee
The 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 Lee