Bruce Lee was more than just an action movie star. He was also a wise and inspirational man.
Don’t believe me? Here are seventy of the most motivational Bruce Lee quotes that will help inspire you in life, sport, or business.
Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.Bruce Lee
Be happy, but never satisfied.Bruce Lee
Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.Bruce Lee
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.Bruce Lee
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.Bruce Lee
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.Bruce Lee
The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus.Bruce Lee
A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.Bruce Lee
Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.Bruce Lee
Simplicity is the key to brilliance.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
If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.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
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
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
The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.Bruce Lee
Be self aware, rather than a repetitious robot.Bruce Lee
As you think, so shall you become.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
Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.Bruce Lee
If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.Bruce Lee
Obey the principles without being bound by them.Bruce Lee
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.Bruce Lee
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.Bruce Lee
Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.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
Using no way as a way, having no limitation as limitation.Bruce Lee
Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.Bruce Lee
Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.Bruce Lee
A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence.Bruce Lee
Real living is living for others.Bruce Lee
The spirit of the individual is determined by his dominating thought habits.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
The more we value things, the less we value ourselves.Bruce Lee
Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.Bruce Lee
It is not a daily increase, but a daily decrease. Hack away at the inessentials.Bruce Lee
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.Bruce Lee
It’s not what you give, it’s the way you give it.Bruce Lee
A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.Bruce Lee
Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.Bruce Lee
Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.Bruce Lee
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.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 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
Take no thought of who is right or wrong, or who is better than. Be not for or against.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
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
Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.Bruce Lee
The three most difficult things in life are:
1. To keep a secret.
2. To forget an injury.
3. To make good use of leisure.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
The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.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
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
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.Bruce Lee
Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.Bruce Lee
Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality in your own mind.Bruce Lee
Never waste energy on worries or negative thoughts, all problems are brought into existence– drop them.Bruce Lee
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.Bruce Lee
Those who are unaware they are walking in darkness will never seek the light.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
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
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
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
