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70+ Inspiring and Thought Provoking Bruce Lee Quotes

One of most influential martial artists of all time, Bruce Lee also became a pop culture icon through his movies, and in the process he changed the general portrayal of Asians in Hollywood movies. Not only that, he was also a philosopher and poet. Suffice it to say that he lived a rich and interesting life, which is reflected in his quotes.

Bruce Lee Quotes About Love

One does not necessarily associate tender feelings like love with accomplished fighters such as Bruce Lee. And yet, he was married, had a family life and, as these quotes attest, thought deeply about the subject.
Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.
Bruce Lee

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If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
Bruce Lee

Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself – to be is to be related.
Bruce Lee

Real living is living for others.
Bruce Lee

Linda and I aren’t one and one. We are two halves that make a whole — two halves fitted together are more efficient than either half would ever be alone!
Bruce Lee

If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love.
Bruce Lee

Seek to understand the root. It is futile to argue as to which single leaf, which design of branch, or which attractive flower you like; when you understand the root, you understand all its blossoming.
Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Quotes About Life

Though his life was cut short in his early thirties, Bruce Lee did more in his brief time on earth than many others do in a 100 years of life. This is reflected in his philosophy and in the wisdom of the thoughts he expressed in the following quotes.
Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.
Bruce Lee

Learning is never cumulative, it is a movement of knowing which has no beginning and no end.
Bruce Lee

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.
Bruce Lee

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.
Bruce Lee

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
Bruce Lee

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.
Bruce Lee

Life is wide, limitless. There is no border, no frontier.
Bruce Lee

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
Bruce Lee

If there is a God, he is within. You don’t ask God to give you things, you depend on God for your inner theme.
Bruce Lee

For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime.
Bruce Lee

Life is never stagnation. It is constant movement, un-rhythmic movement, as we as constant change. Things live by moving and gain strength as they go.
Bruce Lee

In order to taste my cup of water you must first empty your cup.
Bruce Lee

Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot.
Bruce Lee

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.
Bruce Lee

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
Bruce Lee

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.
Bruce Lee

You just wait. I’m going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.
Bruce Lee

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
Bruce Lee

Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.
Bruce Lee

Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.
Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Quotes About Martial Arts

Bruce Lee studied a variety of martial arts since his childhood and even founded a system called Jeet Kune Do. His quotes on martial arts are clearly based on a broad spectrum of experiences.
I fear not the man who has practiced 10 000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10 000 times.
Bruce Lee

The great mistake is to anticipate the outcome of the engagement; you ought not to be thinking of whether it ends in victory or defeat. Let nature take its course, and your tools will strike at the right moment.
Bruce Lee

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

Defeat is a state of mind; No one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as a reality.
Bruce Lee

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
Bruce Lee

Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.
Bruce Lee

Fear comes from uncertainty; we can eliminate the fear within us when we know ourselves better. As the great Sun Tzu said: “When you know yourself and your opponent, you will win every time. When you know yourself but not your opponent, you will win one and lose one. However, when you do not know yourself or your opponent, you will be imperiled every time.”
Bruce Lee

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.
Bruce Lee

Obey the principles without being bound by them.
Bruce Lee

As you think, so shall you become.
Bruce Lee

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.
Bruce Lee

bruce-lee-quotes-a-quick-temper-will

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.
Bruce Lee

It is not a shame to be knocked down by other people. The important thing is to ask when you’re being knocked down, ‘Why am I being knocked down?’ If a person can reflect in this way, then there is hope for this person.
Bruce Lee

To me, defeat in anything is merely temporary…Defeat simply tells me that something is wrong in my doing; it is a path leading to success and truth.
Bruce Lee

If you think a thing is impossible, you’ll only make it impossible.
Bruce Lee

A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.
Bruce Lee

The second-hand artist blindly following his sensei or sifu accepts his pattern. As a result, his action is and , more importantly, his thinking become mechanical. His responses become automatic, according to set patterns, making him narrow and limited.
Bruce Lee

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.
Bruce Lee

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.
Bruce Lee

Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image.
Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Quotes About Goals

Lee achieved so much by the time he died at the tender age of 32, and yet his legacy lives on through his films and his words of wisdom. Perhaps these quotes will inspire you for your own goals.
A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.
Bruce Lee

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.
Bruce Lee

Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being “wholly” and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.
Bruce Lee

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
Bruce Lee

Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.
Bruce Lee

To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.
Bruce Lee

Life is better lived than conceptualized. — This writing can be less demanding should I allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I’ve come to understand that life is best to be lived — not to be conceptualized. If you have to think, you still do not understand.
Bruce Lee

Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.
Bruce Lee

Using no way as a way, having no limitation as limitation.
Bruce Lee

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.
Bruce Lee

Be happy, but never satisfied.
Bruce Lee

The doubters said,
‘Man can not fly,’
The doers said,
‘Maybe, but we’ll try’
And finally soared
In the morning glow
While non-believers
Watched from below.
Bruce Lee

Not being tense but ready.
Not thinking but not dreaming.
Not being set but flexible.
Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement.
It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.
Bruce Lee

There is “what is” only when there is no comparing and to live with “what is” is to be peaceful.
Bruce Lee

The more we value things, the less we value ourselves.
Bruce Lee

Only the self-sufficient stand alone – most people follow the crowd and imitate.
Bruce Lee

I am not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore yourself.
Bruce Lee

If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you
Bruce Lee

What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.
Bruce Lee

It’s not what you give, it’s the way you give it.
Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Quotes About Training

Born in the hour and the year of the Dragon, perhaps Bruce Lee was destined for greatness. However, there is no denying that a lot of hard work went into achieving his goals. Perhaps these quotes will inspire you to emulate his hard work.
Knowing is not enough; We must apply. Willing is not enough; We must do.
Bruce Lee

If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.
Bruce Lee

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
Bruce Lee

Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.
Bruce Lee

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

Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.
Bruce Lee

The doubters said, “Man can not fly,” The doers said, “Maybe, but we’ll try,” And finally soared In the morning glow While non-believers Watched from below.
Bruce Lee

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Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.
Bruce Lee

If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.
Bruce Lee

A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence.
Bruce Lee

Time means a lot to me because you see I am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing.
Bruce Lee

The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.
Bruce Lee

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.
Bruce Lee

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.
Bruce Lee

The possession of anything begins in the mind.
Bruce Lee

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
Bruce Lee

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

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.
Bruce Lee

Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life! Do not be concerned with escaping safely- lay your life before him!!
Bruce Lee

If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.
Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Quotes About Being Yourself

Bruce Lee forged a unique path and changed the existing paradigm, so it is not surprising that he knew so much about being true to himself. Let his quotes inspire you to be bold in your own uniqueness.
Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.
Bruce Lee

Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
Bruce Lee

In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.
Bruce Lee

Flow in the living moment. — 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

bruce-lee-quotes-the-moment-is-freedom

The moment is freedom. — I couldn’t live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.
Bruce Lee

The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition.
Bruce Lee

We have great work ahead of us, and it needs devotion and much, much energy. To grow, to discover, we need involvement, which is something I experience every day — sometimes good, sometimes frustrating.
Bruce Lee

There is no such thing as maturity. There is instead an ever-evolving process of maturing. Because when there is a maturity, there is a conclusion and a cessation. That’s the end. That’s when the coffin is closed.
Bruce Lee

The intangible represents the real power of the universe. It is the seed of the tangible.
Bruce Lee

Everybody has to think for himself. A right way for a big man may not be a right way for a small man. A right way for someone who is slow may not be a right way for someone who is quick. Each person must understand his weaknesses and his strengths.
Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Quotes About Not Giving Up

Anyone who has achieved anything of value has had to persist. This is especially true for physical disciplines like martial arts. These quotes are proof of the incredible spirit and determination Lee possessed.
Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
Bruce Lee

Now I see that I will never find the light Unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, Consuming myself.
Bruce Lee

Remember no man is really defeated unless he is discouraged.
Bruce Lee

In the middle of chaos lies opportunity.
Bruce Lee

I wish neither to possess nor to be possessed. I no longer covet ‘paradise’. More important, I no longer fear ‘hell’.

The medicine for my suffering I had within me from the very beginning but I did not take it. My ailment came from within myself, but I did not observe it, until this moment.

Bruce Lee

Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.
Bruce Lee

Bruce Lee Quotes About Family

As with other issues of importance, Bruce Lee considered the topic of family with great depth and insight. Though he only had his own family for some short years before passing away, and that too at a young age, his quotes display the wisdom of a man older than his years.
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Bruce Lee Quotes About Beauty

Bruce Lee himself has been praised for his physique for decades now. He has given hope to an innumerable number of small-framed men with his lithe, sinewy build. The following quotes present his thoughts on beauty and are marked with his characteristically philosophical nature.
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Bruce Lee Quotes About Confidence

Undeniably shaped by his martial arts background, the following are some of Bruce Lee’s thoughts on the optimal state of mind to cultivate and the role of confidence in life.
The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.
Bruce Lee

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
Bruce Lee

Do not allow negative thoughts to enter your mind for they are the weeds that strangle confidence.
Bruce Lee

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.
Bruce Lee

To be bound by a traditional martial art style or styles is the way of the mindless, enslaved martial artist. But to be inspired by the traditional martial art and to achieve further heights is a way of genius.
Bruce Lee

An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with explanation, with conclusions. Nor is it a mind that believes, because belief is again another form of conclusion.
Bruce Lee

One will never get more than he thinks he can get. you have what it takes.
Bruce Lee

Freedom discovers the man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.
Bruce Lee


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