Quotes by Martial Artists

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.
Bruce Lee
Your heart is full of fertile seeds waiting to sprout.
Morihei Ueshiba
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.
Bruce Lee
A club hurts the flesh, but evil words hurt the bone. -Traditional Chinese Proverb
Matthew Polly
Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it.
Bruce Lee
Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successfull personality and duplicate it.
Bruce Lee
Our most valuable victories are those which go without praise.
Chris Matakas
If you don't want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.
Bruce Lee
The best fighter is not a Boxer, Karate or Judo man. The best fighter is someone who can adapt on any style. He kicks too good for a Boxer, throws too good for a Karate man, and punches too good for a Judo man.
Bruce Lee
It is a shock to many college graduates that their segway into the real world is one of obligation, profound debt, and countless sacrifices of the soul.
Chris Matakas
Don't make the mistake of underestimating your enemies.
Bohdi Sanders
In order to know your enemy, you must become your enemy.
Chris Bradford
The heart of a human being is no different from the soul of heaven and earth. In your practice always keep in your thoughts the interaction of heaven and earth, water and fire, yin and yang.
Morihei Ueshiba
The body is not a product. It is an experience.
Daniele Bolelli
Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.
Bruce Lee
Anyone can be tough for a season. It takes a special kind of human to rise to life's challenges for a lifetime.
Chris Matakas
During times of persistent hardship is when the warrior learns the most about his fortitude.
Bohdi Sanders
The more closely two organisms depend upon each other the harder it becomes to tell where one organism ends and the other begins.
Chris Matakas
We can lose the roll, we can lose position, but we can constantly strive to win the moment.
Chris Matakas
Contained within a given lesson or particular technique is the essence of all techniques. You imitate and study a particular form to grasp the universal principles that allow the technique to work in the first place and that will finally enable you to transcend the form itself to discover the formless.
H.E. Davey
. . to be exceptional in martial arts, you must possess the "4 C's" : Consistency, Commitment, Creativity and Competence
Soke Behzad Ahmadi
Self-discipline is the cornerstone of any endeavor.
Bohdi Sanders
Life is a constant build up and release of tension. If we go too far in either direction bad things happen.
Chris Matakas
You just wait. I'm going to be the biggest Chinese Star in the world.
Bruce Lee
Who you are as a person far outweighs what you do in an athletic arena.
Chris Matakas
Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-conciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.
Bruce Lee
I have never been as alive or awake as I have been through Jiu Jitsu.
Chris Matakas
There are no trophies for the real victories in life.
Chris Matakas
Tomorrow’s victory is today’s practice.
Chris Bradford
To obtain victory by any means and with any weapon.
Chris Bradford
What is it like to feel Tao? It is an effortless flowing, a sweeping momentum. It is like bird song soaring and gliding over a vast landscape. You can feel this in your life: Events will take on a perfect momentum, a glorious cadence. You can feel it in your body: The energy will rise up in you in a thrilling crescendo, setting your very nerves aglow. You can feel it in your spirit: You will enter a state of such perfect grace that you will resound over the landscape of reality like ephemeral bird song.When Tao comes to you in this way, ride it for all that you are worth. Don't interfere. Don't stop - that brings failure, alienation, and regret. Don't try to direct it. Let it flow and follow it. When the Tao is with you, put aside all other concerns. As long as the song lasts, follow. Just follow.
Ming-Dao Deng
You have to be strong enough to stand up for what you believe, even if you are standing alone.
Bohdi Sanders
seven times down eight times up like the Daruma doll
Chris Bradford
The real truth lies below the surface.
Bohdi Sanders
The moon does not fight. It attacks no one. It does not worry. It does not try to crush others. It keeps to its course, but by its very nature, it gently influences. What other body could pull an entire ocean from shore to shore? The moon is faithful to its nature and its power is never diminished.
Ming-Dao Deng
When you are the only laowai in a village of 10,000 Chinese martial artists and you've sat through several dozen films where a white man shouts, "You Chinese dog," before getting his ass kicked, it starts to irritate you. We all need role models.
Matthew Polly
Learn the principles, abide by the principles, and then dissolve the principles.
Bruce Lee
You can't do wrong right, but you can do right wrong.
Bohdi Sanders
Obey the principles without being bound by them.
Bruce Lee
Think for yourself at all times.
Bohdi Sanders
An intelligent consistency is the foundation of genius.
Chris Matakas
Anyone who has ever achieved anything has been a steward of his potential.
Chris Matakas
Jesus was not a carpenter forever.
Chris Matakas
Learn today so that you may live tomorrow
Chris Bradford
Let go of self-condemnation and guilt!
Tae Yun Kim
We are only different because there exists something to be different from, and it is this difference that bonds us.
Chris Matakas
All these men recognized what they themselves valued, and lived according to these values regardless of their relationship to the values of their community. Each lived according to what brought them happiness and peace rather than commonplace prescriptions of the multitudes.
Chris Matakas
There is no such thing as a fair fight.
Bohdi Sanders
The secular world often finds its constituents disenfranchised and solitary as it has spent a great deal of time debating the religious community while failing to build a true community of its own.
Chris Matakas
Empathy is a breaking down of the false constructs of division between the observer and the observed.
Chris Matakas
Revenge is self-defeating. It will eat away you until there is nothing left.
Chris Bradford
Most inherent beauties are hidden, as are precious stones in the rocks
Soke Behzad Ahmadi
Life, is energy. It is the energy that makes your heart beat and makes you breathe, that causes the cells of your body to automatically grow and reproduce the moment you are conceived!
Tae Yun Kim
Sharpen your sword daily , and let it serve your true master: YOU. You and the Master are one
Vernon Kitabu Turner
Have an open mind! Have an empty cup!
Tae Yun Kim
Will doesn't have to be struggle!
Tae Yun Kim
Not being tense but ready.Not thinking but not dreaming.Not being set but flexible.Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement.It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.
Bruce Lee
Karate training will make you strong and confident, but restraint will make you respected
Soke Behzad Ahmadi
Your progress as a Jiu Jitsu practitioner is a direct reflection of the standards you have for yourself.
Chris Matakas
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done.
Bruce Lee