Excerpt: This collection of J. Krishnamurti quotes will challenge you and your beliefs, give you fresh perspectives, and leave you feeling liberated…
Click here to jump right to our list of J. Krishnamurti quotes!
Introduction: Becoming “First-Hand” People Once Again
Freedom From the Known is a book that will snap you free from your current perceptions of the world as you’ve come to know them and will give you the opportunity to begin anew with fresh eyes. It’s a book that wants you to see for yourself… to think for yourself… to act for yourself… and ultimately, to become you—for yourself.
Too much of what’s accepted as norm or known in today’s world, according to J. Krishnamurti, is “spoon-fed” by teachers, authorities, books, and saints… and there isn’t enough independent thinking, acting, and concluding in our own right.
“We are second-hand people,” Krishnamurti explains. “We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.”
The ultimate aim of the book is to free you from the second-hand information that’s driving us to become “second-hand people” and inspire you to once again, be an independent seeker. One who comes to know what they know through first-hand experiences and is able to offer ideas and insights that are “original, pristine, and clear.”
How to do this? By no longer accepting “authority” figures and organizations as the bearers of truth. By no longer blindly following those in leadership roles. By no longer being the disciple who accepts the teachers’ words as irrefutable truth.
…We do this by becoming our own teacher; by becoming our own disciple. We do it by questioning everything we’ve been taught and everything that we have come to accept as valuable—as necessary. We do it by becoming the judge, jury, and executioner of all ideas that meet us on our path so that we can finally become, what J. Krishnamurti argues we can be: a first-hand people once again.
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Below, you will find our collection of J. Krishnamurti quotes broken up into four sections (click to jump):
- 7 Quotes on Identity / Self-Discovery
- 5 Quotes on Meditation / Presence
- 9 Quotes on Problem-Solving / Inner Peace
- 5 Quotes on Making a Difference
The quotes are arranged in an order that I felt helps most clearly communicate J. Krishnamurti’s messages. And the emphasis added is my own. I hope by the time you’re done, if nothing else, you resolve to take just a little more ownership over the incoming information in your life—and you “x” out of this tab feeling a little more free to come to your own conclusions in life. Something I’d say would be a win for us all. Cheers and enjoy!
7 J. Krishnamurti Quotes on Identity / Self-Discovery:
“Where do we begin to understand ourselves? Here am I, and how am I to study myself, observe myself, see what is actually taking place inside myself? I can observe myself only in relationship because all life is relationship. It is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. I cannot exist by myself. I exist only in relationship to people, things and ideas, and in studying my relationship to outward things and people, as well as to inward things, I begin to understand myself.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 22)
“In order to understand ourselves we need a great deal of humility. If you start by saying, ‘I know myself’, you have already stopped learning about yourself; or if you say, ‘There is nothing much to learn about myself because I am just a bundle of memories, ideas, experiences and traditions’, then you have also stopped learning about yourself. The moment you have achieved anything you cease to have that quality of innocence and humility; the moment you have a conclusion or start examining from knowledge, you are finished, for then you are translating every living thing in terms of the old. Whereas if you have no foothold, if there is no certainty, no achievement, there is freedom to look, to achieve. And when you look with freedom it is always new. A confident man is a dead human being.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 24)
“To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting. When we look at ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday we will fail to understand the living movement and the beauty and quality of that movement.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 19)
“A man who says, ‘I want to change, tell me how to’, seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not. He wants an authority whom he hopes will bring about order in himself. But can authority ever bring about inward order? Order imposed from without must always breed disorder.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 17)
“In trying to conform to [an] ideology, you suppress yourself—whereas what is actually true is not the ideology but what you are. If you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a secondhand human being.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 17)
“What is important is not a philosophy of life but to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life, inwardly and outwardly.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 16)
“The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 12)
5 J. Krishnamurti Quotes on Meditation / Presence
“Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention. Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life—perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 116)
“If one wants to see a thing very clearly, one’s mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering, the dialogue, the images, the pictures—all that must be put aside to look.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 103)
“One of the functions of thought is to be occupied all the time with something. Most of us want to have our minds continually occupied so that we are prevented from seeing ourselves as we actually are. We are afraid to be empty. We are afraid to look at our fears.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 44)
“There is a story of a religious teacher who used to talk every morning to his disciples. One morning he got on to the platform and was just about to begin when a little bird came and sat on the window sill and began to sing, and sang away with full heart. Then it stopped and flew away and the teacher said, ‘The sermon for this morning is over.’”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 89)
“If your eyes are blinded with your worries, you cannot see the beauty of the sunset.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 88)
9 J. Krishnamurti Quotes on Problem Solving / Inner Peace:
“Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 36)
“Problems exist only in time, that is when we meet an issue incompletely. This incomplete coming together with the issue creates the problem. When we meet a challenge partially, fragmentarily, or try to escape from it that is, when we meet it without complete attention—we bring about a problem. And the problem continues so long as we continue to give it incomplete attention, so long as we hope to solve it one of these days.“
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 73)
“We carry our burdens all the time; we never die to them, we never leave them behind. It is only when we give complete attention to a problem and solve it immediately—never carrying it over to the next day, the next minute—that there is solitude. Then, even, if we live in a crowded house or are in a bus, we have solitude. And that solitude indicates a fresh mind, an innocent mind.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 106)
“When there is love and beauty, whatever you do is right, whatever you do is in order. If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 86)
“If I am all the time measuring myself against you, struggling to be like you, then I am denying what I am myself. Therefore I am creating an illusion. Comparison in any form leads only to greater illusion and greater misery.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 32)
“We are always comparing what we are with what we should be. The should-be is a projection of what we think we ought to be. Contradiction exists when there is comparison, not only with something or somebody, but with what you were yesterday, and hence there is conflict between what has been and what is. There is what is only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful. Then you can give your whole attention without any distraction to what is within yourself—whether it be despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness—and live with it completely; then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 63)
“If you do not compare yourself with another you will be what you are. Through comparison you hope to evolve, to grow, to become more intelligent, more beautiful. But will you? The fact is what you are, and by comparing you are fragmenting the fact which is a waste of energy. To see what you actually are without any comparison gives you tremendous energy to look. When you can look at yourself without comparison you are beyond comparison, which does not mean that the mind is stagnant with contentment.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 64)
“One must become poor inwardly for then there is no seeking, no asking, no desire, no—nothing! It is only this inward poverty that can see the truth of a life in which there is no conflict at all. Such a life is a benediction not to be found in any church or any temple.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 60)
“To learn, to discover something fundamental you must have the capacity to go deeply. If you have a blunt instrument, a dull instrument, you cannot go deeply. So what we are doing is sharpening the instrument, which is the mind—the mind which has been made dull by all this justifying and condemning. You can penetrate deeply only if your mind is as sharp as a needle and as strong as a diamond.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 54)
5 J. Krishnamurti Quotes on Making a Difference:
“We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us. And only when we realise, not intellectually but actually, as actually as we would recognise that we are hungry or in pain, that you and I are responsible for all this existing chaos, for all the misery throughout the entire world because we have contributed to it in our daily lives and are part of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its ugliness, brutality and greed—only then will we act.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 14)
“Every day we see or read of appalling things happening in the world as the result of violence in man. You may say, ‘I can’t do anything about it’, or, ‘How can I influence the world?’ I think you can tremendously influence the world if in yourself you are not violent, if you lead actually every day a peaceful life—a life which is not competitive, ambitious, envious—a life which does not create enmity. Small fires can become a blaze.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 118)
“We have reduced the world to its present state of chaos by our self-centered activity, by our prejudices, our hatreds, our nationalism, and when we say we cannot do anything about it, we are accepting disorder in ourselves as inevitable. We have splintered the world into fragments and if we ourselves are broken, fragmented, our relationship with the world will also be broken. But if, when we act, we act totally, then our relationship with the world undergoes a tremendous revolution.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 119)
“Fear is not love, dependence is not love, jealousy is not love, possessiveness and domination are not love, responsibility and duty are not love, self-pity is not love, the agony of not being loved is not love, love is not the opposite of hate any more than humility is the opposite of vanity. So if you can eliminate all these, not by forcing them but by washing them away as the rain washes the dust of many days from a leaf, then perhaps you will come upon this strange flower which man always hungers after.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 85)
“Most of us are frightened of dying because we don’t know what it means to live. We don’t know how to live, therefore we don’t know how to die. As long as we are frightened of life we shall be frightened of death. The man who is not frightened of life is not frightened of being completely insecure for he understands that inwardly, physiologically, there is no security. When there is no security there is an endless movement and then life and death are the same. The man who lives without conflict, who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die.”
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom From The Known (Page 73)
If you enjoyed these quotes from Freedom From The Known, then you should check out J. Krishnamurti’s book in full. It comes highly recommended:
By: J. Krishnamurti
Book Overview: In this classic work, Krishnamurti shows how you can free yourself from the tyranny of the expected. You are free to create your own future, and your departure from the confining expectations of ‘fate’ can be radical and immediate—no matter what your age. By changing yourself, you can change your relationships with others, consequently improving the whole structure of society. The vital need for change and the recognition of its very possibility constitute the rich essence of Krishnamurti’s message in Freedom from the Known.
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