“It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky and then feel pretty cool. Or I can do all kinds of phony things and be blinded by it. Or I can show you some really fancy movement. But to express oneself honestly, not lying to oneself – that my friend, is very hard to do.”
“My life…seems to me to be a life of self-examination, a peeling of myself bit by bit, day by day.”
Finding truth in one discipline and then applying that truth to an entirely unrelated discipline is a hallmark of Lee’s genius: he saw the connection where others did not.
“It is only in the process of coming to know ourselves that we can come to know anything.”
“The emotions that destroy the inner rhythm of a man are hatred, jealousy, lust, envy, pride, vanity, covetousness, and fear.” – Glen Clark
“Western hygiene is a gratuitous waste of energy. The overexertion and overdevelopment of bodily organs involved in Western athletics is detrimental to one’s health. Chines hygiene, on the other hand, throws it’s emphasis on conservation of energy; the principle is always that of moderation without going to the extreme. Whatever exercise there may be consists of harmonious movements calculated to normalize but not to excite one’s bodily regimen. It starts out with a mental regimen as a basis, in which the sole object is to bring about peace and calmness of mind. With this as a basis, it aims at stimulating the normal functioning of the internal process of respiration and blood circulation.” – Bruce Lee
“The successful warrior is the average man with laser like focus.”
“Kung Fu is simply the direct expression of one’s feeling with the minimum of lines and energy.”
Even Lao-tzu, the author of the Tao Teh Ching, and the man who wrote “He who knows does not speak, he who speaks does not know” wrote five thousand words to explain his doctrine.
There is a Chinese saying that applies: “Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant.”
“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. We realized that manipulation and control are not the ultimate joy of life — to become read, to learn to take a stand, to develop one’s center, to support our total personality, a release to spontaneity – yes, yes, yes. – Bruce Lee’s notes on Gestalt Therapy
“I do my thing, and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations.
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you and I am I.
And if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful
If, it can’t be helped.”