Top 496 Quotes & Sayings by Bruce Lee

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American actor Bruce Lee.

Last updated on September 11, 2024.

Bruce Lee was a Hong Kong and American martial artist, martial arts instructor, actor, director, screenwriter, producer, and philosopher. He was the founder of Jeet Kune Do, a hybrid martial arts philosophy drawing from different combat disciplines that is often credited with paving the way for modern mixed martial arts (MMA). Lee is considered by critics, media, and other martial artists to be the most influential martial artist of all time and a pop culture icon of the 20th century, who bridged the gap between East and West. He is credited with promoting Hong Kong action cinema and helping to change the way Asians were presented in American films.

American - Actor | November 27, 1940 - July 20, 1973

Source: Wikipedia

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

Bruce Lee

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Bruce Lee

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce Lee

Obey the principles without being bound by them.

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

Real living is living for others.

Bruce Lee

If you always put limit 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

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

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

As you think, so shall you become.

Bruce Lee

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

Bruce Lee

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

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

Bruce Lee

It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

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

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

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.

Bruce Lee

You just wait. I'm going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

Concentration is the root of all the higher abilities in man.

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

Sorrows are our best educator. A man can see further through a tear than a telescope.

Bruce Lee

When you feel pain, you know that you are still alive.

Bruce Lee

Are you going to let the obstacles in your life be stumbling blocks or stepping stones? Choose the positive. You are the master of your attitude.

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. You might be deteriorating physically in the long process of aging, but your personal process of daily discovery is ongoing. You continue to learn more and more about yourself every day.

Bruce Lee

Emotion can be the enemy, if you give into your emotion, you lose yourself. You must be at one with your emotion, because the body always follows the mind.

Bruce Lee

Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.

Bruce Lee

Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.

Bruce Lee

If you knew you had to fight for your life tomorrow, would you change your training today?

Bruce Lee

Everyone wants to learn how to win, but no one wants to learn how to accept defeat.

Bruce Lee

Long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity.

Bruce Lee

In order to realize our true self we must be willing to live without being dependent upon the opinion of others.

Bruce Lee

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

Bruce Lee

The mind is like a fertile garden in which anything that is planted, flowers or weeds, will grow.

Bruce Lee

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

Bruce Lee

To become a champion requires a good mental attitude toward preparation. You have to accept the most tedious task with pleasure.

Bruce Lee

The change is from inner to outer. We start by dissolving our attitude not by altering outer conditions.

Bruce Lee

Cease negative mental chattering. If you think a thing is impossible, you'll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.

Bruce Lee

Preparation for tomorrow is hard work today.

Bruce Lee

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

When you say that something is impossible, you have made it impossible.

Bruce Lee

In the middle of chaos lies opportunity.

Bruce Lee

The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues.

Bruce Lee

Every man today is the result of his thoughts yesterday.

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 round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Bruce Lee

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

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

Bruce Lee

Life itself is your teacher, and you are in a state of constant learning.

Bruce Lee

Your state of mind is everything.

Bruce Lee