Best Martial Arts Quotes

Wisdom is knowing when you can’t be wise.

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

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

Without knowledge, skill cannot be focused. Without skill, strength cannot be brought to bear and without strength, knowledge may not be applied.

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.

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.

It isn’t the mountains that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

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

The biggest coward of a man is to awaken the love of a woman without the intention of loving her.

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

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

Research your own experience. Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.

Do not run away; let go. Do not seek; for it will come when least expected.

Kung fu lives in everything we do. It lives in how we put on a jacket and how we take off a jacket. It lives in how we treat people. Everything is kung fu.

Be happy, but never satisfied.

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth.

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

Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

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.

Many people dedicate their lives to actualizing a concept of what they should be like, rather than actualizing themselves. This difference between self-actualization and self-image actualization is very important. Most people live only for their image

A lot of times people look at the negative side of what they feel they can’t do. I always look on the positive side of what I can do.

Be respectful of your Sensei.

The children right now, the young children, everybody should go to a martial arts school. Why? Because as soon as they go to a martial arts school, they learn discipline.

Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.

And having those mystical elements you see in Asian cinema and certainly Asian martial arts cinema, it’s something that we wanted to begin to introduce – the idea of spirituality and the idea of there being something else out in the world besides people who are great fighters.

The principle of martial arts is not a thing that can be learned, like a science, by fact-finding and instruction in facts. It has to grow spontaneously, like a flower, in a mind free from emotions and desires.

Forget about winning and losing, forget about pride and pain

The martial arts are based upon understanding, hard work and a total comprehension of skills. Power training and the use of force are easy, but total comprehension of all of the skills of the martial arts is very difficult to achieve.

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.

The usefulness of the cup is its emptiness.

Unfortunately, now in boxing people are only allowed to punch. In Judo, people are only allowed to throw. I do not despise these kinds of martial arts. What I mean is, we now find rigid forms which create differences among clans, and the world of martial art is shattered as a result.

Good technique includes quick changes, great variety and speed. It may be a system of reversals much like a concept of God and the Devil. In the speed of events, which one is really in charge? Do they change places with lightning speed? The Chinese believe so. To put the heart of the martial arts in your own heart and have it be a part of you means total comprehension.

I did martial arts and karate for eight years when I was growing up.