Striking Thoughts - Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

Self-actualisation is the important thing. And my personal message to people is that I hope they will go toward self-actualisation rather than self-image actualisation. I hope that they will search within themselves for honest self-expression. (View Highlight)

Independent inquiry is needed in your search for truth, not dependence on anyone else’s view or a mere book. (View Highlight)

Meaning is found in relationship. - Meaning is the relationship of the foreground figure to the background. (View Highlight)

Pliability is life. - 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. (View Highlight)

To live is to create.- 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. (View Highlight)

Existence precedes consciousness. - The primary reality is not what I think, but that I live, for those also live who do not think. Although this living may not be a real living. God! What contradictions when we seek to join in wedlock life and reason! (View Highlight)

On past, present, and future. - My friend, do think of the past in terms of those memories of events and accomplishments which were pleasant, rewarding, and satisfying. The present? Well, think of it in terms of challenges and opportunities, and the rewards available for the application of your talents and energies. As for the future, that is a time and a place where every worthy ambition you possess is within your grasp. (View Highlight)

To live now you must die to yesterday. - 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. (View Highlight)

Time spent vs. time wasted. - 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. (View Highlight)

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of. (View Highlight)

The root of concentration. - Concentration is the ROOT of all the higher abilities in man. (View Highlight)

The root vs. the branches. - 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. (View Highlight)