64 Motivational Bruce Lee Quotes That Will Inspire You To Be Your Best Self
Lee Jun-fan (Chinese: 李振藩; November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973), known professionally as Bruce Lee – was more than just an action movie star. He was also a wise and inspirational man.
Don’t believe me?
Then check out some of these quotes below. There’s more than just a handful of them. This is a list of seventy of the most motivational Bruce Lee quotes that will help inspire you in life, sport, or business:
1. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
2. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
3. “Simplicity is the key to brilliance.”
4. “Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
5. “Be happy, but never satisfied.”
6. “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”
7. “The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.”
8. “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
9. “Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.”
10. “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
11. “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.”
12. “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
13. “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
14. “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.”
15. “I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
16. “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”
17. “Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot.”
18. “As you think, so shall you become.”
19. “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.”
20. “Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.”
21. “If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.”
22. “Obey the principles without being bound by them.”
23. “A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.”
24. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
25. “Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”
26. “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.”
27. “Using no way as a way, having no limitation as limitation.”
28. “Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.”
29. “Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
30. “A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence.”
31. “Real living is living for others.”
32. “The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.”
33. “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.”
34. “The more we value things, the less we value ourselves.”
35. “Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.”
36. “It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.”
37. “The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.”
38. “It’s not what you give, it’s the way you give it.”
39. “A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.”
40. “Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
41. “Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.”
42. “Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. To realize that it’s just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.”
43. “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!!”
44. “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.”
45. “For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime.”
46. “Take no thought of who is right or wrong, or who is better than. Be not for or against.”
47. “If you want to learn to swim jump into the water. On dry land no frame of mind is ever going to help you.”
48. “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.”
49. “Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.”
50. “The three most difficult things in life are:
To keep a secret.
To forget an injury.
To make good use of leisure.”
51. “Self-knowledge involves relationships. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. The relationship is a process of self-evaluation and self-revelation. Relationships are the mirror in which you discover yourself – to be is to be related.”
52. “The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”
53. “Time means a lot to me because you see I am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing.”
54. “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.”
55. “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. Now I see that I will never find the light unless, like the candle, I am my own fuel, consuming myself.”
56. “Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.”
57. “Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality in your own mind.”
58. “Never waste energy on worries or negative thoughts, all problems are brought into existence– drop them.”
59. “Reality is apparent when one ceases to compare. There is what is” only when there is no comparison at all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful.”
60. “Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.”
61. “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.”
62. “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.”
63. “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.”
64. “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.”