“Don't get set into one form. Adapt it and build your own, and let it grow. Be like water.”

“Use karate, judo, aikido, or any style to build your counter-offensive. It will be interesting!”

“If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.”

“To be bound by traditional martial-art styles is the way of the mindless, enslaved martial artist. But to be inspired by traditional martial arts and to achieve further heights is the way of genius.”

“When there is freedom from mechanical conditioning, there is simplicity.”

“Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life.”

“Don't ignore the five senses in search of a sixth.”

“Put every great teacher in a room, and they'd agree about everything, but put their disciples in there and they'd argue about everything.”

“To develop the creative attitude, analyze and focus on the desired solution; gather and fill your mind with the facts; write down ideas, both sensible and seemingly wild; let the facts and ideas simmer in your mind; evaluate, recheck, and settle on the creative ideas.”

“The intangible represents the real power of the universe. It is the seed of the tangible.”

“Seek freedom from the conformity of styles.”

“The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.”

“If people say Jeet Kune Do is different from this or that, then let the name of Jeet Kune Do be wiped out; it is just a name. Don't fuss over it.”

“Learning is a constant process of discovery — a process without end.”

“All of us have wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.”

“Take what's useful, discard what is not.”

“The more complicated and restricted the method, the less opportunity for expression of one's original sense of freedom.”

“Art requires imagination. It requires creativity. Creativity requires experience, and experience comes from your life. Your life is expressed in your art.”

“Art is never decoration or embellishment; instead it is a work of enlightenment. Art, in other words, is a technique for acquiring liberty.”

“Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”

“The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world.”

“The principle of martial arts is not something that can be learned like a science by fact-finding or instruction. It must grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and desires.”

“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.”

“We have more faith in what we imitate than in what we create.”

“In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject; he chisels away the nonessentials until the truth of his creation is revealed without obstruction.”

“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.”

“Martial arts, like any art, is an unrestricted athletic expression of an individual soul.”

“Be natural, my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art.”

“The usefulness of the cup is its emptiness.”

“When one has no form, one can be all forms.”

“The unconditioned mind intuits truth.”

“Where there is no style, there is no slave. Martial arts mean honestly expressing yourself. No style. No slave.”

“The second-hand artist, blindly following his sensei or sifu, accepts that pattern. As a result, his actions — and, more importantly, his thinking — become mechanical. His responses become automatic, locked into set patterns, which makes him narrow and limited.”

“In combat, spontaneity rules; rote performance of technique perishes.”

“New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.”

“Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.”

“To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself.”

“Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.”

“To be certain, every day can bring a revelation or a new discovery.”

“True observation begins when you are free of set patterns. Freedom of expression happens when you are beyond systems.”

“To live is to express, and to express you have to create. Creation is never merely repetition. To live is to express oneself freely in creation.”

“The aim of art is to project an inner vision into the world, to state in aesthetic creation the deepest psychic and personal experiences of a human being. It is to enable those experiences to be intelligible and generally recognized within the total framework of an ideal world.”

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

“A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence.”

“An intelligent mind is an inquiring mind. It is not satisfied with simple explanations or final conclusions. It does not accept belief as a shortcut, because belief can become another form of conclusion.”

“The deluded mind is the mind affectively burdened by intellect. Thus it cannot move without stopping and reflecting on itself. This obstructs its native fluidity.”

“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”

“Man is constantly growing, and when he becomes bound by a fixed pattern of ideas or a single way of doing things, that is when he stops growing.”

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

“The highest technique is to have no technique. My technique is a result of your technique; my movement is a result of your movement.”