Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee (also Bruce Li) - martial artist, philosopher, movie producer and actor

---

Bruce Lee has wrongly been given credit for a vast number of quotations from other sources, ranging from the works of Leonardo Da Vinci to Helen Keller. In most cases this was the fault of Bruce Lee's heirs and not Bruce Lee himself, but any words that Bruce Lee put on paper are suspect and should be viewed with a grain of salt.

• "Using no way as way, having, no limitation as limitation"

• "Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend."

• "When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow - you are not understanding yourself."

• "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."

• "The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world, to state in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal experiences of a human being. It is to enable those experiences to be intelligible and generally recognized within the total framework of an ideal world."

• "Art is an expression of life and transcends both time and space. We must employ our own souls through art to give a new form and a new meaning to nature or the world. "Artless art" is the artistic process within the artist; its meaning is "art of the soul"."

• "Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make."

• "Art reveals itself in psychic understanding of the inner essence of things and gives form to the relation of man with nothing, with the nature of the absolute."

• "An artist's expression is his soul made apparent, his schooling, as well as his "cool" being exhibited. Behind every motion, the music of his soul is made visible. Otherwise, his motion is empty and empty motion is like an empty word; no meaning."

• "Art is never decoration or embellishment; instead, it is work of enlightenment. Art, in other words, is a technique for acquiring liberty."

• "Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul."

• "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."

• "The artistic activity does not lie in art itself as such. It penetrates into a deeper world in which all art forms (of things inwardly experienced) flow together, and in which the harmony of soul and cosmos in the nothing has its outcome in reality."

• "It is the artistic process, therefore, that is reality and reality is truth."

• "If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo."

• "Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves."

• "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."

• "Give up thinking as though not giving it up. Observe techniques as though not observing."

• "Eliminate "not clear" thinking and function from your root."

• "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. It is living void, because all forms come out of it and whoever realizes the void is filled with life and power and the love of all being."

• "Nothingness cannot be defined; the softest thing cannot be snapped."

• "The point is doing of them rather than the accomplishments. There is no actor but the action; there is no experiencer but the experience."

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

• "Wisdom does not consist of trying to wrest the good from the evil but in learning to "ride" them as a cork adapts itself to the crests and troughs of the waves." This quote was plagiarized by Bruce Lee for an essay he submitted to the University of Washington at Seattle. The actual source of the quote is Alan Watts' book "This Is It" (1959).

• "It's not daily increase but decrease - hack away the unessential!"