* Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. If you put water in a cup it becomes the cup, if you put into a bottle it becomes the bottle. You put water into a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
* Like everyone else you want to learn the way to win, but never to accept the way to lose - to accept defeat. To learn to die is to be liberated from it. So when tomorrow comes you must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying!
When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity. The classical man is just a bundle of routine, ideas and tradition. If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.
A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.
A martial artist who drills exclusively to a set pattern of combat is losing his freedom. He is actually becoming a slave to a choice pattern and feels that the pattern is the real thing. It leads to stagnation because the way of combat is never based on personal choice and fancies, but constantly changes from moment to moment, and the disappointed combatant will soon find out that his "choice routine" lacks pliability. There must be a "being" instead of a "doing" in training. One must be free. Instead of complexity of form, there should be simplicity of expression.
All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself; do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.
Art is the expression of the self. The more complicated and restricted the method, the less the opportunity for expression of one's original sense of freedom. Though they play an important role in the early stage, the techniques should not be too mechanical, complex or restrictive. If we cling blindly to them, we shall eventually become bound by their limitations. Remember, you are expressing the techniques and not doing the techniques.
Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.
I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.
I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves.
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.
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.
In Jeet Kune-Do, physical conditioning is a must for all martial artists. If you are not physically fit, you have no business doing any hard sparring. To me, the best exercise for this is running. Running is so important that you should keep it up during your lifetime. What time of the day you run is not important as long as you run. In the beginning you should jog easily and then gradually increase the distance and tempo, and finally include sprints to develop your 'wind.' 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.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
It is true that the mental aspect of kung-fu is the desired end; however, to achieve this end, technical skill must come first.
Jeet Kune Do, It's just a name, don't fuss over it. There's no such thing as a style if you understand the roots of combat.
Let the spirit out — Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one's bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.
Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.
When I look around I always learn something, and that is to be yourself always, express yourself, and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate him.
The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.
Be ready to face failure, for you will learn from it!