Excerpt: Striking Thoughts is a book that features 800+ Bruce Lee quotes. We read each one and hand-picked 46 of the best ones (in our humble opinion)…
“Create immediately an atmosphere of freedom so that you can live and find out for yourselves what is true, so that you are able to face the world with the ability to understand it, not just conform to it. One can tell for oneself whether the water is warm or cold. In the same way, a man must convince himself about these experiences, only then are they real.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 208)
“My life it seems is a life of self-examination: a self-peeling of my self, bit by bit, day by day. More and more it’s becoming simple to me as a human being [as] more and more I search [within] myself. And more and more the questions become listed. And more and more I see clearly. It is not a question of developing what has already been developed but of recovering what has been left behind. Though this has been with us, in us, all the time and has never been lost or distorted except for our misguided manipulation of it.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 182)
“To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self-revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself—to be is to be related.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 181)
“The problem lies in asking somebody else to solve your own problem instead of asking yourself. I can give you ten thousand of my ways, but they are my way, not yours. An individual’s questions are answerable only by the individual himself, and nothing would be gained by his sitting in on a recital of mine.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 179)
“The eight requirements that will eliminate suffering by correting false values and giving true knowledge of life’s meaning have been summed up as follows: First, you must see clearly what is wrong. Next, decide to be cured. You must act. Speak so as to aim at being cured. Your livelihood must not conflict with your therapy. The therapy must go forward at the ‘staying speed;’ the critical velocity that can be sustained. You must think and feel about it incessantly. Learn how to contemplate with the deep mind.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 162)
“The true artist has no public; he works for the sheer joy of it, with an element of playfulness, of casualness. 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.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 140)
“Art is never decoration, embellishment; instead it is work of enlightenment. Art, in other words, is a technique for acquiring liberty.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 135)
“Art is communication of feelings.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 134)
“To many, the word ‘success’ seems to be a paradise, but now that I’m in the midst of it, it is nothing but circumstances that seem to complicate my innate feeling toward simplicity and privacy.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 126)
“If you want to do your duty properly, you should do just a little more than that.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 117)
“We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 115)
“The stillness in stillness is not the real stillness, only when there is stillness in movement does the universal rhythm manifest.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 106)
“Shut out all forms of distraction. Eliminate all opportunities for rivalry.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 103)
“Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles, big or small, and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself. There is no such thing as defeat until you admit so yourself, but not until then!”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 102)
“What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 100)
“Sorrow are our best educator. A man can see further through a tear than a telescope.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 100)
“In a time when everything goes well, my mind is pampered with enjoyment, possessiveness, etc. Only in times of adversity, privation, or mishap, does my mind function and think properly of my state. This close examination of self strengthens my mind and leads me to understand and be understood.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 98)
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. The good life constitutes a direction selected by the total organism, when there is psychological freedom to move in ANY direction.”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 93)
“Remember, I am no teacher; I can merely be a signpost for a traveler who is lost. It is up to you to decide on the direction. All I can offer is an experience but never a conclusion, so even what I have said needs to be thoroughly examined by you. I might be able to help you discover and examine your problem by awakening your awareness of their cause and effect, but I cannot teach you, for I am not a teacher, and I have no style. I don’t believe in a system, nor in a method. And without system, without method, what’s to teach?”
Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (Page 90)
