Jiddu Krishnamurti was one of the most renowned spiritual teachers and authors of the 20th century.
He was known for his enlightening and thought-provoking words of wisdom, which have stood the test of time. His powerful quotes are still relevant today, offering valuable insight into everyday life.
If you're looking for some inspiration and guidance, this article will guide you through some of the best quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti. Here you'll find words of wisdom on everything from living with presence, personal growth, morality, and much more.
Dive in and discover what this great teacher had to say about the meaning of life, the importance of relationships, and how to live your best life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes On Love And Life
"Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life." - 'The Flight Of The Eagle'
"Most of us want the security of loving and being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, his own particular path?" - 'A Key To End Sorrow'
"When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love."
"To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom."
"When you love, you are not lonely."
"The significance of life is living."
"Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict."
"The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action."
"We are not loved because we don't know how to love."
"Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it."
"At the end of your ambition, you are either so-called successful man with plenty of money or a failure and, therefore, a frustrated human being."
"Love has no past or future, and so it is with this extraordinary state of silence."
"To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves, and what is important at the beginning with ourselves is the intention."
"It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will."
"To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education." - 'Education And The Significance Of Life'
"Love is something totally new every day, but pleasure is not; pleasure has continuity. Love is always new, and therefore it is its own eternity."
"Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love.... we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery."
"The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence."
"If you lose touch with nature, you lose touch with humanity."
"We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love."
"Passion is a rather frightening thing because if you have passion, you don't know where it will take you."
"'As long as you belong to me, I love you, but the moment you don't, I begin to hate you."
"To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion."
"The ending is the beginning, and the beginning is the first step, and the first step is the only step."
"Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone."
"A man who says, 'I want to change, tell me how to seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not."
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes On Education
"One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end."
"Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased."
"Teaching is not the mere imparting of knowledge but the cultivation of an inquiring mind."
"If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it because the answer is not separate from the problem."
"But how can we be free to look and learn when our minds, from the moment we are born to the moment we die, are shaped by a particular culture?"
"A man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind."
"If education leads to war, if it teaches us to destroy or be destroyed, has it not utterly failed?"
"You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary."
"To understand the whole operation of one's own mind requires a great deal of insight, a great deal of inquiry without condemnation."
You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name, and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if, in the process, your mind becomes dull and weary?"
"You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn't react immediately when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said."
"I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know."
"The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is."
"Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows, and joys.
"You only learn when you give your whole being to something."
"You can only be afraid of what you think you know."
"There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning."
"Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education."
"The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom."
"Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance."
"The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth."
Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence."
"Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation."
"To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention."
To ask the right question demands a great deal of intelligence and sensitivity.
"Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river."
"If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation."
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes On Freedom
"And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact of what we really are."
"It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free."
"The very desire to be certain,to be secure,is the beginning of bondage."
"The only freedom is the freedom from the known."
"Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love."
"It's only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty,and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery."
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes On Happiness
"Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it."
"It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy."
"The beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is."
"To have peace, we will have to love, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them."
"To avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned."
"The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another."
"When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being."
Miscellaneous Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear."
"If we are constantly judging the child according to our personal likes and dislikes, we are bound to create barriers and hindrances in our relationship with him and in his relationships with the world."
"It is only in alert silence that truth can be."
"Revolt doesn't answer a thing. You must understand it, go into it, examine it, give your heart and your mind, with everything that you have, to find out a way of living differently."
"Order cannot possibly be brought about through conformity to a pattern, under any circumstances."
"Do it or don't do it but get on with it..."
"Until we are free from fear, climb the highest mountain, invent every kind of God, we will always remain in darkness."
"The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything."
"To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom."
"When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important."
"To ask the 'right' question is far more important than to receive the answer."
"The solution of a problem lies in the understanding of the problem; the answer is not outside the problem, it is in the problem."
"Analysis does not transform consciousness."
"There can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge."
"The word 'innocence' means a mind that is incapable of being hurt."
"Psychologically, the man who runs away from himself, from his own emptiness, whose escape is his search for God, is on the same level as the drunkard."
"If you would listen, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease."
"The mind that asks a question and is merely satisfied with an explanation, a verbal statement, remains superficial."
If there is a gap between what is said and your own reaction to what is said, in that interval, whether you prolong it indefinitely, for a long period or for a few seconds - in that interval, if you observe, there comes clarity.
"Fear is always in relation to something; it does not exist by itself."
"When you once see something as false which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human, then you can never go back to it."
"Be a light unto oneself"
"What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world."
"The day you teach the child the name of the bird, the child will never see that bird again."
"Happy is the man who is nothing."
"When we suffer we have made it into a personal affair. We shut out all the suffering of mankind."
"Truth is a pathless land"
"If we want to change existing conditions, we must first transform ourselves, which means that we must become aware of our own actions, thoughts and feelings in everyday life."
"The mind that is alone is not only innocent but young -- not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age -- and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words."
"Thinking about the pain of yesterday, thinking which involves the memory of yesterday's pain, projects the fear of having pain again tomorrow."
"I have stood on the mountain top and gazed at the mighty Beings. Never can I be in utter darkness; I have seen the glorious and healing Light."
"If we understand one question rightly, all questions are answered but we don't know how to ask the right question."
"We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes."
"Fear is the other side of the coin which is called pleasure."
"Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living."
"Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments"
"Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience."
"To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still."
"One of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authority."
"An idealist is a hypocrite, because he is always trying to become what he is not, instead of being and understanding what he is."
"Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay."
