Quotes from Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

To be is to be related.

There is an art of seeing things as they are: without naming, without being caught in a network of words, without thinking interfering with perception.

A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations is really an uncreative mind.

A lily or a rose never pretends, and its beauty is that it is what it is.

If your eyes are blinded with your worries, you cannot see the beauty of the sunset.

Did you ever sit quietly with your back straight, not moving, just only cherishing the beauty of silence?

Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.

Only when the mind is completely alone can it know what is beauty, and not in any other state.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

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.

If we depend for our happiness on another, on society or on environment, they become essential to us; we cling to them, and any alteration of these we violently oppose because we depend upon them for our psychological security and comfort.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, a peaceful man.

The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.

The very urge to get rid of desire is still desire, is it not?

The very desire to be certain,to be secure,is the beginning of bondage.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.

After all, conflict arises, does it not, through the desire to be something, to be other than what is.

While expressing your desires, you would need to exercise control in order to prevent them from doing harm to you or to others.

Am I caught in a self-centred, narrow little cell which refuses to look beyond? Do I see it when you come along and tell me that my brain is the brain of all mankind?

Merely to stuff the child with a lot of information, making him pass examinations, is the most unintelligent form of education.

Right education should help the student, not only to develop his capacities, but to understand his own highest interest.

What you believe you experience.