Quotes by "Jiddu Krishnamurti"

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

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

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

You can only be afraid of what you think you know.

Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.

Without self-knowledge, the god that you seek is the god of illusion; and illusion inevitably brings conflict and sorrow.

Life is a total process, the inner as well as the outer; the outer definitely affects the inner, but the inner invariably overcomes the outer. What you are, you bring about outwardly. The outer and the inner cannot be separated and kept in watertight compartments, for they are constantly interacting upon each other; but the inner craving, the hidden pursuits and motives, are always more powerful. Life is not dependent upon political or economic activity; life is not a mere outward show, any more than a tree is the leaf or the branch. Life is a total process whose beauty is to be discovered only in its integration.

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.

Governments want efficient technicians, not human beings, because human beings become dangerous to governments – and to organized religions as well. That is why governments and religious organizations seek to control education.

When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.

Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.

Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree', or `that is a banyan tree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.

Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.

While one is young is the time to investigate, to experiment with everything. The school should help its young people to discover their vocations and responsibilities, and not merely cram their minds with facts and technical knowledge; it should be the soil in which they can grow without fear, happily and integrally.

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.

To understand death is to understand something which is closely related to life.

The problem of sex, which is now so important, so vast in our lives, loses it's meaning when there is the tenderness, the warmth, the kindliness, the mercy of love.

So, can my mind be free from the given culture in which I have been brought up? This is really quite an important question. Because if the mind is not free from the culture in which it has been reared, nurtured, surely the individual can never be at peace, can never have freedom. His gods and his myths, his symbols, and all his endeavors are limited, for they are still within the field of the conditioned mind. Whatever efforts he makes, or does not make, within that limited field, are really futile in the deepest sense of that word. There may be a better decoration of the prison—more light, more windows, better food—but it is still the prison of a particular culture.

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.

To understand a child we have to watch him at play, study him in his different moods; we cannot project upon him our own prejudices, hopes and fears, or mould him to fit the pattern of our desires. 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. Unfortunately, most of us desire to shape the child in a way that is gratifying to our own vanities and idiosyncrasies; we find varying degrees of comfort and satisfaction in exclusive ownership and domination.