“To understand and live now, there must be dying to everything of yesterday. Die continually to every newly gained experience—be in a state of choiceless awareness of WHAT IS.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 14)
“You can never invite the wind, but you must leave the window open.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 13)
“We are always in a process of becoming and NOTHING is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. OPEN yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the TOTAL OPENNESS OF THE LIVING MOMENT. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 13)
“The root is the fulcrum on which will rest the expression of your soul; the root is the ‘starting point’ of all natural manifestation. If the root is right so will be all its manifestation. It cannot be, when the root is neglected, that what should spring from it will be well-ordered.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 12)
“What we are after is the root and not the branches. The root is the real knowledge; the branches are surface knowledge. Real knowledge breeds ‘body feel’ and personal expression; surface knowledge breeds mechanical conditioning and imposing limitation and squelches creativity.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 11)
“A simple life is one of plainness, in which profit is discarded, cleverness abandoned, selfishness eliminated, and desires reduced. It is the life of perfection which seems to be incomplete, and of fullness which seems to be empty. It is the life which is as bright as light, but does not dazzle. In short, it is a life of harmony, unity, contentment, tranquillity, constancy enlightenment, peace, and long life.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 6)
“To live is to express, and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. To live is to express oneself freely in creation.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 6)
“If other people having it worse than you means you can’t be sad, then other people having it better than you would mean you can’t be happy. Feel what you feel.”
Ideopunk, LessWrong
“If somebody is undergoing group criticism, the tribal part in you will want to join in the fun of righteously destroying somebody. Resist this, you’ll only add ugliness to the world. And anyway, they’ve already learned the lesson they’re going to learn and it probably isn’t the lesson you want.”
Ideopunk, LessWrong
“Procrastination comes naturally, so apply it to bad things. ‘I want to hurt myself right now. I’ll do it in an hour.’ ‘I want a smoke now, so in half an hour I’ll go have a smoke.’ Then repeat. Much like our good plans fall apart while we delay them, so can our bad plans.”
Ideopunk, LessWrong
“To start defining your problems, say (out loud) ‘everything in my life is completely fine.’ Notice what objections arise.”
Ideopunk, LessWrong
“Defining yourself by your suffering is an effective way to keep suffering forever (ex. incels, trauma).”
Ideopunk, LessWrong
“You have a plan. A time-traveller from 2030 appears and tells you your plan failed. Which part of your plan do you think is the one that fails? Fix that part.”
Ideopunk, LessWrong
“’Where is the good knife?’ If you’re looking for your good X, you have bad Xs. Throw those out.”
Ideopunk, LessWrong
“Be pliable. When a man is living, he is soft and pliable; when he is dead, he becomes rigid. Pliability is life; rigidity is death, whether one speaks of man’s body, his mind, or his spirit.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 5)
“Life is an ever-flowing process and somewhere on the path some unpleasant things will pop up—it might leave a scar, but then life is flowing, and like running water, when it stops it grows stale. Go bravely on, my friend, because each experience teaches us a lesson. Keep blasting because life is such that sometimes it is nice and sometimes it is not.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 5)
“When people say ‘Do you have 5 minutes?’ I don’t think they’re cognizant of the 30+ minutes of context-switching I’d have to do for that 5 minutes.”
Sahil Lavingia, Twitter
“There are two very clear indications of real science and real art: the first inner sign is that a scholar or an artist works not for profit, but for sacrifice, for his calling; the second, outer sign is that his works are understandable to all people. Real science studies and makes accessible that knowledge which people at that period of history think important, and real art transfers this truth from the domain of knowledge to the domain of feelings.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 196)
“Remember that you cannot do anything wonderful driven by competition; you cannot do anything noble from pride.”
John Ruskin, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 196)
“Art has such an impact on people that many strange things can happen in their souls: mysteries become clearer; opaque things become evident; complicated things become simple; what is probable becomes necessary. A real artist always simplifies.”
Henri Amiel, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 196)