Bruce Lee (1940–73) was an influential martial artist, pop culture icon, and film actor. He helped popularize martial arts movies in the 1970s and influenced numerous Hollywood action heroes.
Born Lee Yuen Kam in San Francisco’s Chinatown to parents touring with a Hong Kong opera troupe, Lee became a child star in Hong Kong. When he returned to America in his early twenties, Lee developed a new martial arts technique called “Jeet Kune Do” by blending traditional kung fu, fencing, boxing, and Eastern philosophy. He taught martial arts and performed minor roles in TV and film.
In 1971, Lee moved back to Hong Kong and immediately starred in two two wildly successful action flicks that broke box-office records: Tang shan da xiong (1971; The Big Boss in Hong Kong, Fists of Fury in USA) and Jing wu men (1972; Fist of Fury, The Chinese Connection.)
Lee produced, directed, wrote, and starred in his next film, Meng long guo jiang (1972, The Way of the Dragon, Return of the Dragon.) Lee’s subsequent film Enter the Dragon (1973) became a worldwide hit and thrust him into international super-stardom. Unfortunately, Lee died a sudden and mysterious death six days before the film’s Hong Kong release. An unfinished film called Game of Death (1978) was compiled with stand-ins and paper cutouts of Lee’s face.
Over the decades, Lee’s action performances, onscreen humor, and dramatic sensibility in his five films cultivated a considerable following. Lee became a prominent pop culture icon of the 20th century.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Bruce Lee
Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.
—Bruce Lee
One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always run to simplicity.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Simplicity
As long as we separate this ‘oneness’ into two, we won’t achieve realization.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Accomplishment
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Personality
Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Creativity
We shall find the answer when we examine the problem, the problem is never apart from the answer, the problem IS the answer, understanding the problem dissolves the problem.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Problems
Set patterns, incapable of adaptability, of pliability, only offer a better cage. Truth is outside all patterns.
—Bruce Lee
Circumstances hell! I make circumstances!
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Chance, Circumstance
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.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Awareness
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
Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Courage, Life, Challenges
Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Failures, Mistakes
Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Change
The moment is freedom.—I couldn’t live by a rigid schedule. I try to live freely from moment to moment, letting things happen and adjusting to them.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Time Management
I’m a philosophy major. That means I can think deep thoughts about being unemployed
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Philosophy
The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. Halfway cultivation runs to ornamentation.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Simplicity
Ideas are the beginning of all achievement.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: One liners, Accomplishment
Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Reality
As you think, so shall you become.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Thinking, Thoughts, Thought
The future looks extremely bright indeed, with lots of possibilities ahead—big possibilities. Like the song says, “We’ve just begun.”
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Future, The Future
I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. 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.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Happiness
Obey the principles without being bound by them.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Principles
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
Topics: Expectation
If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Value, Time Management
Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless—like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, 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
Topics: Creativity, Thoughts, Mind, Meditation, Friend, Water
A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.
—Bruce Lee
Flow in the living moment.—We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Time Management
It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Time Management, Productivity, Simplicity
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.
—Bruce Lee
Topics: Productivity, Thinking, Procrastination, Time Management, Value
I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.
—Bruce Lee
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Tiger Woods American Sportsperson
Ayn Rand Russian-born American Novelist
Carl Reiner American Comedian
Joe Paterno American Sportsperson
Michael Jordan American Sportsperson
Bob Knight American Sportsperson
Mickey Rivers American Sportsperson
Arthur Ashe American Tennis Player
Yogi Berra American Sportsperson
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar American Basketball Player