17 Bruce Lee Quotes on Truth

Bruce Lee quotes on truth

10. Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

16. 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.

39. Be aware of doing your best to understand the ROOT in life, and realize the DIRECT and the INDIRECT are in fact a complementary WHOLE. It is to see things as they are and not to become attached to anything - to be unconscious meant to be be innocent of the working of a relative (empirical) mind - where there is no abiding of though anywhere on anything - this is being unbound. This not abiding anywhere is the root of our life.

50. Conditioning obstructs our view of reality. - We do not see IT in its suchness because of our indoctrination, crooked and twisted.

51. True thusness is without defiling thought; it cannot be known through conception and thought.

62. True thusness is the substance of thought, and thought is the function of true thusness. There is no thought except that of true thusness. Thusness does not move, but its motion and function are inexhaustible.

63. Liberate yourself from concepts and see the truth with your own eyes. - It exists HERE and NOW; it requires only one thing to see it: openness, freedom - the freedom to be open and not tethered by any ideas, concepts, etc. ... When our mind is tranquil, there will be an occasional pause to its feverish activities, there will be a let-go, and it is only then in the interval between two thoughts that a flash of UNDERSTANDING - understanding, which is not thought - can take place.

84. All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

93. Finally, a Jeet Kune Do man who says Jeet Kune Do is exclusively Jeet Kune Do is simply not with it. He is still hung up on his self-closing resistance, in this case anchored down to reactionary pattern, and naturally is still bound by another modified pattern and can move within its limits. He has not digested the simple fact that truth exists outside all molds; pattern and awareness is never exclusive.

95. I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.

105. If you don't want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.

108. In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiselling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. Thus, contrary to other styles, being wise in Jeet Kune-Do doesn't mean adding more; it means to minimize, in other words to hack away the unessential.

119. Knowledge in martial arts actually means self-knowledge. A martial artist has to take responsibility for himself and accept the consequences of his own doing. The understanding of JKD is through personal feeling from movement to movement in the mirror of the relationship and not through a process of isolation. To be is to be related. To isolate is death. To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. It has always been very easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool and all that. I can make all kinds of phoney things. Blinded by it. Or I can show some really fancy movement. But to experience oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, and to express myself honestly, now that, my friend, is very hard to do.

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

152. The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference and heaven and earth are set apart; if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between 'for' and 'against' is the mind's worst disease.

169. To see a thing uncoloured by one's own personal preferences and desires is to see it in its own pristine simplicity.

182. When I was having dinner with Chuck [Norris] I did ask him: 'If you and Bruce would be in a real fight to death, who would win?', and he said without thinking: 'Bruce of course. Nobody can beat him'.