Today marks the birthday of Bruce Lee (1940–73,) the influential martial artist and pop culture icon. This American-born film actor helped popularize martial arts movies in the 1970s and influenced numerous Hollywood action heroes.
Lee was born Lee Jun-fan in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but grew up 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 films 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 huge following. Lee became a prominent pop culture icon of the 20th century.
Inspirational Quotations by Bruce Lee
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 (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always run to simplicity.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
As long as we separate this ‘oneness’ into two, we won’t achieve realization.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
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 (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
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 (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
Ideas are the beginning of all achievement.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
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 (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
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 (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
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 (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)
If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)