Bruce Lee Quotes

201 Sourced Quotes

Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality-in your own mind.

Bruce Lee
Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

Bruce Lee
Jeet Kune Do favors formlessness so that it can assume all forms and since Jeet Kune Do has no style, it can fit in with all styles. As a result, Jeet Kune Do utilizes all ways and is bound by none and, likewise, uses any techniques which serve its end.

Bruce Lee
As long as we separate this oneness into two we won't achieve realization.

Bruce Lee
You know what I want to think of myself? As a human being. Because, I mean I don't want to be like "As Confucius say," but under the sky, under the heavens there is but one family. It just so happens man that people are different.

Bruce Lee
When you're talking about fighting, as it is, with no rules, well then, baby you'd better train every part of your body!

Bruce Lee
If your opponent is at a distance, kick him in the groin. If he gets close, poke him in the eyes, bring up your knee, pop him with an elbow, dig a corkscrew punch to his stomach.

Bruce Lee
It is not a shame to be knocked down by other people. The important thing is to ask when you're being knocked down, 'Why am I being knocked down?' If a person can reflect in this way, then there is hope for this person.

Bruce Lee
Unfortunately, now in boxing people are only allowed to punch. In Judo, people are only allowed to throw. I do not despise these kinds of martial arts. What I mean is, we now find rigid forms which create differences among clans, and the world of martial art is shattered as a result.

Bruce Lee
Through my own observations. I am convinced that an absolutely honest and direct inquiry into oneself will lead to understanding.

Bruce Lee
The Western approach to reality is mostly through theory, and theory begins by denying reality — to talk about reality, to go around reality, to catch anything that attracts our sense-intellect and abstract it away from reality itself. Thus philosophy begins by saying that the outside world is not a basic fact, that its existence can be doubted and that every proposition in which the reality of the outside world is affirmed is not an evident proposition but one that needs to be divided, dissected and analyzed. It is to stand consciously aside and try to square a circle.

Bruce Lee
A quality martial artist is always ready for any move, and trains oneself invincible.

Bruce Lee
Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.

Bruce Lee
Sorrows are our best educator. A man can see further through a tear than a telescope.

Bruce Lee
Meaning is found in relationship. — Meaning is the relationship of the foreground figure to the background.

Bruce Lee
Life lives; and in the living flow, no questions are raised. The reason is that life is a living now! So, in order to live life whole-heartedly, the answer is life simply is.

Bruce Lee
Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.

Bruce Lee
Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.

Bruce Lee
If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love.

Bruce Lee
Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.

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
A self-willed man obeys a different law, the one law I, too, hold absolutely sacred — the human law in himself, his own individual will.

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 meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.

Bruce Lee
If there is a God, he is within. You don't ask God to give you things, you depend on God for your inner theme.

Bruce Lee
There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That's the end. That's when the coffin is closed. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day.

Bruce Lee
What you HABITUALLY THINK largely determines what you will ultimately become.

Bruce Lee
Let the spirit out - Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.

Bruce Lee
The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.

Bruce Lee
The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition

Bruce Lee