BRUCE LEE: IN HIS WORDS

We here at Chicago’s MMA are huge Bruce Lee fans. Isn’t everybody? Take a lesson from The Man.

• “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.”
• “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.”
• “A good fight should be like a small play…but played seriously. When the opponent expands, l contract. When he contracts, l expand. And when there is an opportunity… l do not hit…it hits all by itself (shows his fist). Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease when the mind is obsessed with it.”
• “There is no opponent.”
• “Learn the principle, abide by the principle, and dissolve the principle. In short, enter a mold without being caged in it. Obey the principle without being bound by it. LEARN, MASTER AND ACHIEVE!!!”
• “Knowledge in martial arts actually means self-knowledge. A martial artist has to take responsibility for himself and accept the consequences of his own doing. The understanding of Jeet Kune Do is through personal feeling from movement to movement in the mirror of the relationship and not through a process of isolation. To be is to be related. To isolate is death. To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. It has always been very easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool and all that. I can make all kinds of phoney things. Blinded by it. Or I can show some really fancy movement. But to experience oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, and to express myself honestly, now that is very hard to do.”
• “I believe in having a few pupils at one time as it requires a constant alert observation of each individual in order to establish a direct relationship. A good teacher can never be fixed in a routine… each moment requires a sensitive mind that is constantly changing and constantly adapting. A teacher must never impose this student to fit his favourite pattern; a good teacher functions as a pointer, exposing his student’s vulnerability (and) causing him to explore both internally and finally integrating himself with his being. Martial art should not be passed out indiscriminately.
• “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. The danger of training with the heavy bag is that it doesn’t react to one’s attack and sometimes there is a tendency to thoughtlessness. One will punch the bag carelessly, and would be vulnerable in a real situation if this became a habit.”
• “A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.”
• “Let me give you a bit of warning: just because you get very good at your training it should not go to your head that you are an expert. Remember, actual sparring is the ultimate, and the training is, only a means toward this. Besides running, one should also do exercises for the stomach – sit-ups, leg raises, etc. Too often one of those big-belly masters will tell you that his internal power has sunk to his stomach; he’s not kidding, it is sunk and gone! To put it bluntly, he is nothing but fat and ugly.”
• “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.”
• “The main characteristic Jeet Kune-Do is the absence of the usual classical passive blocking. Blocking is the least efficient. Jeet Kune-Do is offensive; it’s alive and it’s free.”
• “Jeet Kune Do is training and discipline towards the ultimate reality in combat.”
• “Jeet Kune-Do is the only non-classical style of Chinese Kung Fu in existence today. It is simple in its execution, although not so simple to explain. Jeet means ‘to stop, to stem, to intercept,’ while Kune means ‘fist’ or ‘style,’ and Do means ‘the way’ or ‘the ultimate reality.’ In other words–’The Way of the Intercepting Fist.’”
• “I have not invented a “new style,” composite, modified or otherwise that is set within distinct form as apart from “this” method or “that” method. On the contrary, I hope to free my followers from clinging to styles, patterns, or molds. Remember that Jeet Kune Do is merely a name used, a mirror in which to see “ourselves”. . . Jeet Kune Do is not an organized institution that one can be a member of. Either you understand or you don’t, and that is that.”
• “Faith is a state of mind that can be conditioned through self-discipline. Faith will accomplish.”
• “If I tell you I’m good, you would probably think I’m boasting. If I tell you I’m no good, you know I’m lying.”

source: equotes