Lee was born in San Francisco, California, and raised in Hong Kong until his late teens. His Hong Kong and Hollywood-produced films elevated the traditional Hong Kong martial arts film to a new level of popularity and acclaim, and sparked the second major surge of interest in Chinese martial arts in the West. The direction and tone of his films changed and influenced martial arts and martial arts films in Hong Kong and the rest of the world as well. He is noted for his roles in five feature length films, Lo Wei’s The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972); Way of the Dragon (1972), directed and written by Bruce Lee; Warner Brothers’ Enter the Dragon (1973), directed by Robert Clouse, and The Game of Death (1978).

Lee became an iconic figure, particularly among the Chinese, as he portrayed Chinese national pride and Chinese nationalism in his movies. While Lee initially trained in Wing Chun, he later rejected well-defined martial art styles, favoring instead to utilize useful techniques from various sources.

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Sayings by Bruce Lee

1. A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

2. Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

3. Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.

4. If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

5. If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

6. If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.

7. Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

8. Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.

9. I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

10. Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

11. Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and 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.

12. Be happy, but never satisfied.

13. Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.

14. I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times.

15. The doubters said, “Man can not fly.” The doers said, “Maybe, but we’ll try.” And finally soared in the morning glow while non-believers watched from below.

16. Empty your cup so that it may be filled; become devoid to gain totality.

17. For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others.

18. A good teacher protects his pupils from his own influence.

19. To spend time is to pass it in a specified manner. To waste time is to expend it thoughtlessly or carelessly. We all have time to either spend or waste and it is our decision what to do with it. But once passed, it is gone forever.

20. Self-knowledge involves relationship. To know oneself is to study one self in action with another person. Relationship is a process of self evaluation and self revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself – to be is to be related.

21. Defeat is not defeat unless accepted as a reality-in your own mind.

22. Real living is living for others.

23. The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.

24. The possession of anything begins in the mind.

25. If you think a thing is impossible,you’ll only make it impossible.

26. In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you’re tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.