Well, let’s face it, in Hong Kong today, can you have a fight?—I mean a no-holds-barred fight? Is it a legal thing? It isn’t, is it? And for me, a lot of things, like “challenging” and all that, I am the last to know! I am always the last to know, man. I always find out from newspapers, from reporters, before I personally know what the hell is happening.
On my fighting ability
All the time, people come up and say “Bruce—are you really that good?” I say, “Well, if I tell you I’m good, probably you will say that I’m boasting. But if I tell you I’m not good, you’ll know I’m lying.”
I have no fear of an opponent in front of me. I’m very self-sufficient, and they do not bother me. And, should I fight, should I do anything, I have made up my mind that, baby, you had better kill me before I get you.
To tell the truth, I could beat anybody in the world.
Someone once asked me, what I am going to do when I am fifty or sixty. I replied “Man, there ain’t going to be no fifty or sixty-year-old that can push me around.”
On why Hollywood’s elite want to learn martial art
The way that I teach it, all types of knowledge ultimately mean self-knowledge. So therefore, these people are coming in and asking me to teach them, not so much how to “defend themselves” or how to do somebody in. Rather, they want to learn to express themselves through some movement, be it anger, be it determination, or whatever. So, in other words, they’re paying me to show them, in combative form, the art of expressing the human body.
Don’t look for secret moves. Don’t look for secret movements. If you’re always hunting for secret techniques you’re going to miss it. It’s you. It’s your body that’s the key.
Complete determination—the mark of the real fighter
You must be fierce, but have patience at the same time. Most important of all, you must have complete determination. The worst opponent you can come across is one whose aim has become an obsession. For instance, if a man has decided that he is going to bite off your nose no matter what happens to him in the process, the chances are he will succeed in doing it. He may be severely beaten up too, but that will not stop him from carrying out his objective. That is the real fighter.
A lesson in attitude
Suppose you come home and find some guys have battered a friend. First, you’re going to think about what you should do. Then you’re going to try and figure out how. But suppose, instead of a friend, you come home and find your mother battered. Wham! You’re ready—that’s pure attitude.
On wu-hsin (no-mind) in martial art
What man has to get over is consciousness. The consciousness of himself.
The story of the centipede
The fluidity a martial artist seeks can best be described by the story of the centipede. The many-footed creature was asked how it managed to walk on all its feet. When it stopped to think about how it managed its daily function, it tripped and fell. And so, life should be a natural process, in which the development of the mind is not allowed to throw the natural flow of life out of balance.
On being whole
When a man is thinking he stands off from what he is trying to understand. Feeling exists here and now when not interrupted and dissected by ideas or concepts. The moment we stop analyzing and let go, we can start really seeing, feeling—as one whole. There is no actor or one being acted upon but the action itself. I stayed with my feeling then—and I felt it to the full without naming it that. At last the I and the feeling merged to become one. The I no longer feels the self to be separated from the you and the whole idea of taking advantage or getting something out of something becomes absurd. To me, I have no other self (not to mention thought) than the oneness of things of which I was aware at that moment.
I could not feel a conceptually defined pattern, and the essential quality of feeling life lies simply in the feeling. Do not, as when in the midst of enjoying yourself, step out for a moment and examine yourself to see if you are getting the utmost out of the occasion. Or, not content with feeling happy, you want to feel yourself feeling happy.
Longstreet: Wait a minute. Let me think.
Lee: If you have to think, you still do not understand.
It is when you act with unconscious awareness, you just act. Like when you throw a ball to me and, without thought, my hands go up and catch it. Or when a child or animal runs in front of your car, you automatically apply the brakes. When you throw a punch at me, I intercept and hit you back, but without thought. “It” just happens.
On guns versus martial artists
Nowadays, I mean you don’t go around on the street, kicking people or punching people. Because if you do, they will pull a gun out of their jacket and bang! That’s it. I mean, I don’t care how good [in martial art] you are!
On my martial origins
When I started studying the martial arts I was thirteen years old. I studied under Yip Man. It was a Chinese art. The form of the martial art that I studied was Wing Chun. Some have called gung fu “a Chinese form of karate,” but you cannot really call it that because karate came after Chinese gung fu. I mean karate, and all these things, came after that, you see.
MARTIAL VARIETY AND ASSESSMENTS
On gung fu
The word gung fu includes techniques of hands, feet, knees, elbows, shoulders, head, and thighs, the thirty-six throws, the seventy-two joint locks, and the eighteen different weapons. Swordplay is the most difficult of all arts in gung fu. It requires at least ten years of hard training to be a master of it. The sword must be united with the mind, and be used as the limb of the body.
Classical gung fu analyzed
1. Classically inclined—hand position, ritualistic and unrealistic techniques
2. Rhythmic training—forms, two-man cooperation
3. Partial in structure—the nucleus and the circumference
On the difference between Chinese boxing and Western boxing
Well, first, we use the feet. And then we use the elbow. You name it, man, we use it! We use it all, you see, because that is the expression of the human body. I mean everything—not just the hands! When you are talking about combat, well, I mean, if it is a sport [i.e., like Western boxing], then now you are talking about something else; you have regulations, you have rules. But if you are talking about, fighting, as it is—with no rules—well then, baby, you’d better train every part of your body!
On boxing versus real fighting
If you put on a glove, you are dealing in rules. You must know the rules to survive. But in the street you have more tools in your favor—the kick, the throw, the punch.
On board breaking
Boards don’t hit back. This matter of breaking bricks and boards with the edge of your hand: Now I ask you, did you ever see a brick or a board pick a fight with anybody? This is gimmick stuff. A human being doesn’t just stand there and wait to be hit.
Polemics