Krishnamurti Quotes

Education is at present concerned with outward efficiency, and it utterly disregards, or deliberately perverts, the inward nature of man; it develops only one part of him and leaves the rest to drag along as best it can.

Our inner confusion, antagonism and fear ever overcome the outer structure of society, however nobly conceived and cunningly built. When there is not the right kind of education we destroy one another, and physical security for every individual is denied.

To educate the student rightly is to help him to understand the total process of himself; for it is only when there is integration of the mind and heart in everyday action that there can be intelligence and inward transformation.

While offering information and technical training, education should above all encourage an integrated outlook on life; it should help the student to recognize and break down in himself all social distinctions and prejudices, and discourage the acquisitive pursuit of power and domination. It should encourage the right kind of self-observation and the experiencing of life as a whole, which is not to give significance to the part, to the "me" and the "mine", but to help the mind to go above and beyond itself to discover the real.

Freedom comes into being only through self-knowledge in one's daily occupations, that is, in one's relationship with people, with things, with ideas and with nature. If the educator is helping the student to be integ ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

What is correct action in a deteriorating world? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

This society conditions the mind to a particular pattern of thought, the pattern of self-improvement, self-adjustment, self-sacrifice, and only those who are capable of breaking away from all conditioning can discover that which is not measurable by the mind. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

As long as you ask questions you are breaking through, but the moment you begin to accept, you are psychologically dead. So right through life don't accept a thing, but inquire, investigate. Then you will find that your mind is something really extraordinary, it has no end, and to such a mind there is no death. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The observer is the observed and therein lies sanity, the whole, and with the holy is love. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The Creative knows the great beginnings. The Receptive completes the finished things. The Creative is decided and therefore shows to men the easy. The Receptive is yielding and therefore shows to men the simple. Learning is movement from moment to moment. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is only the mind which does not belong that can be alone. And aloneness is not something to be cultivated. You see this? When you see all this, you are out, and no governor or president is going to invite you to dinner. Out of that aloneness there is humility. It is this aloneness that knows love - not power. The ambitious man, religious or ordinary, will never know what love is. So, if one sees all this, then one has this quality of total living and therefore total action. This comes through self-knowledge. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation, then, is a state of mind in which the 'me' is absent. And therefore that very absence brings order. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on ... man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. That is what we should be interested in, and not in shaping the child according to some idealistic pattern. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To find out what living is as well as to find out what dying is, one must come into contact with death, that is, one must end every day everything one has known. One must end the image that one has built up about oneself, about one's family, about one's relationship, the image that one has built through pleasure, through one's relationship to society, everything. That is what is going to take place when death occurs. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world's problems. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Imagination and romanticism deny love, for love is its own eternity. Man has sought through various gods, ideologies and hopes, something that is not bound by time. The birth of a new baby is not the indication of something eternal. Life comes and goes. There is death, there is suffering and all the mischief that man can make, and this movement of change, decay and birth is still within the cycle of time. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To understand what is right meditation there must be an awareness of the operation of one's own consciousness, and then there is complete attention. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

You think when you don't want to do anything. Thinking is a poor alternative to acting. Your thinking is consuming all your energy. Act, don't think! ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

Order cannot possibly be brought about through conformity to a pattern, under any circumstances. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Take a journey into the things which you are carrying, the known- not into the unknown-into what you already know: your pleasures, your delights, your despairs, your sorrows. Take a journey into that, that is all you have. ~ 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. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Society or culture or whatever you might want to call it, has created us all solely and wholly for the purpose of maintaining its continuity and status quo. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

If we could establish a deep abiding relationship with nature, we would never kill an animal for our appetite; we would never harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. We would find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Its beautiful to be alone. To be alone does not mean to be lonely. it means the mind is not influenced and contaminated by society. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

You may repeat the most marvelous poems. And that is not worth a cent if you don't live it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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 vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

After all, without understanding yourself, what basis have you for right thinking? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

You can only be afraid of what you think you know. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

So through identification you have pleasure and pain. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

We are concerned, not with the development of just one capacity, such as that of a mathematician, or a scientist, or a musician, but with the total development of the student as a human
being. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The ambitious man has never found his true vocation ... ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Wanting has to go. Wanting to be free from something that is not there is what you call "sorrow." Wanting to be free from sorrow is sorrow. There is no other sorrow. You don't want to be free from sorrow. You just think about sorrow, without acting. Your thinking endlessly about being free from sorrow is only more material for sorrow. Thinking does not put an end to sorrow. Sorrow is there for you as long as you think. There is actually no sorrow there to be free from. Thinking about and struggling against "sorrow" is sorrow. Since you can't stop thinking, and thinking is sorrow, you will always suffer. There is no way out, no escape. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

I admire and respect the tenacity, courage, and patience of the unenlightened in the face of so much overwhelming evidence ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I think one has to understand, not as a theory, not as a speculative, entertaining concept, but rather as an actual fact - that we are the world and the world is us. The world is each one of us; to feel that, to be really committed to it and to nothing else, brings about a feeling of great responsibility and an action that must not be fragmentary, but whole. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To compare is the very nature of a mind that is not awake to discover what is true. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

What is there to understand? The significance of life? How long will it take to understand the significance and the meaning of life? 20 years? 30 years? And the same question will be here in another 20 years, I guarantee you. Until you stop asking that question. When that question is not there, you are there. So that's the reason why you keep asking the question: you do not want the question to come to an end. When that comes to an end, there will not be anybody, left there, to find out the meaning, the purpose and the significance of life. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and, therefore, to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees, everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now, and we will have no wars. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with the insects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hills calling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all living things on the earth. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

You haven't changed. You may say: 'I'm full of love, I'm full of truth, I'm full of knowledge, I'm full of wisdom.' I say: 'That's all nonsense. Do you behave? Are you free of fear? Are you free of ambition, greed, envy and the desire to achieve success in every field? If not, you are just playing a game. You are not serious.' ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

You know, this dialogue is only helpful when we come, both of us, to a point and realize that no dialogue is possible, that no dialogue is necessary. When I say 'understanding', 'seeing', they mean something different to me. Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more; there is nothing there that says "now I understand!" - that's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

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

Solitude is one thing and being alone is another. Solitude can be isolation, an escape, an unwanted thing; but to be alone without the burden of life, with that utter freedom in which time/thought has never been, is to be with the universe. In solitude there is despairing loneliness, a sense of being abandoned, lost, craving for some kind of relationship, like a ship lost at sea. All our daily activity leads to this isolation, with its endless conflicts and miseries, and rare joys thrown in. This isolation is corruption, manifested in politics, in business and of course in organized religions. Corruption exists in the very high places and on the very doorstep. To be tied is corruption; any form of attachment leads to it, whether it be to a belief, faith, ideal, experience, or any conclusion. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Organized religion is the frozen thought of man, out of which he builds temples and churches; it has become a solace for the fearful, an opiate for those who are in sorrow. But God or truth is far beyond thought and emotional demands. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your separate self is you. There is nothing there inside you other than that. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

We want to make life permanent, but in doing so we go against nature, and there lies our pain. Only the mind which is always moving, without resting places and fixed ideas, can be in tune with life and therefore joyful. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If you have fear, you are bound by tradition, you follow some leader or guru. When you are bound by tradition, when you are afraid of your husband or your wife, you lose your dignity as an individual human being. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To concentrate implies bringing all your energy to focus on a certain point; but thought wanders away ... Whereas attention has no control, no concentration. It is complete attention, which means giving all your energy, the energy of the brain, your heart, everything, to attending ... ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Because we want to be inwardly secure, we are constantly seeking methods and means for this security, and thereby we create authority, the worship of another, which destroys comprehension, that spontaneous tranquility of mind in which alone there can be a state of creativeness. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is. Self-knowledge has no end - you don't come to an achievement, you don't come to a conclusion. It is an endless river. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To concentrate is not to meditate, even though that is what most of you do, calling it meditation. And if concentration is not meditation, then what is? Surely, meditation is to understand every thought that comes into being, and not to dwell upon one particular thought; it is to invite all thoughts so that you understand the whole process of thinking. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The average person wastes his life. He has a great deal of energy but he wastes it. The life of an average person seems at the end utterly meaningless…without significance. When he looks back…what has he done?


MIND

The mind creates routine for its own safety and convenience. Tradition becomes our security. But when the mind is secure it is in decay. We all want to be famous people…and the moment we want to be something…we are no longer free.

Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential…the what is. It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything new…and in that there's joy. To awaken this capacity in oneself and in others is real education.

SOCIETY

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Nature is busy creating absolutely unique individuals…whereas culture has invented a single mold to which we must conform. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person because he conforms to a pattern. He repeats phrases and thinks in a groove. What happens to your heart and your mind when you are merely imitative, naturally they wither, do they not?

The great enemy of mankind is superstition and belief which is the same thing. When you separate yourself by belief tradition by nationally it breeds violence. Despots are only the spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power which is in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is really very important while you are young to live in an environment in which there is no fear. Most of us, as we grow older, become frightened; we are afraid of living, afraid of losing a job, afraid of tradition, afraid of what the neighbours, or what the wife or husband would say, afraid of death. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Can't two people be in love and both be so intelligent and so sensitive that there is freedom and absence of a center that makes for conflict? Conflict is not the feeling of being in love. The feeling of being in love is utterly without conflict. There is no loss of energy in being in love. The loss of energy is in the tail, in everything that follows - jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, doubt, the fear of losing that love, the constant demand for reassurance and security. Surely, it must be possible to function in a sexual relationship with someone you love without the nightmare which usually follows. Of course it is. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Society has put before you the ideal of a 'perfect man'. No matter in which culture you were born, you have scriptural doctrines and traditions handed down to you to tell you how to behave. You are told that through due practice you can even eventually come into the state attained by the sages, saints and saviors of mankind. And so you try to control your behavior, to control your thoughts, to be something unnatural. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

One of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is copying, which is the worship of authority. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The becoming still can never be the being still; only with the death of becoming is there being. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Student: Sir, you said you must change the world. How can you change it, sir? Krishnamurti: What is the world? The world is where you live - your family, your friends, your neighbours. And your family, your friends, your neighbours can be extended and that is the world. Now, you are the centre of that world. That is the world you live in. Now how will you change the world? By changing yourself. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

So, if we really want to create a different world, a different relationship between human beings, a different attitude toward life, it is essential that we should first understand ourselves, is it not? This does not mean self-centered concentration, which leads to utter misery. What I am suggesting is that without self-knowledge, without deeply knowing oneself, all inquiry, all thought, all conclusions, opinions, and values have very little meaning. Most of us are conditioned - conditioned as Christians, as Muslims, or what you will, and within that narrow area we have our being. Our minds are conditioned by society, by education, by the culture about us, and without understanding the total process of that conditioning, our search, our knowledge, our inquiry can only lead to further mischief, to greater misery, which is what is actually happening. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Truth is not a matter of argumentation and conviction; it is not the outcome of opinion. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I am not anti-rational, just unrational. You may infer a rational meaning in what I say or do, but it is your doing, not mine. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

When the mind sees itself in the mirror of relationship, from that perception there is self-knowledge. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

Conflict exists only when there are two opposing things: fear and non-fear,violence and non-violence. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Man has always wanted something holy, sacred.
Just being kind to others, being sensitive, polite, considerate, thoughtful and affectionate: that hasn't got depth, it hasn't got vitality. Unless you find out in your life something really sacred which has depth, which has tremendous beauty, which is the source of everything, life becomes very superficial. You may be happily married, with children, a house and money, you may be clever and famous, but without that perfume
everything becomes like a shadow that has no substance. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If there is no meditation, then you are like a blind man in a world of great beauty, light and colour. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Is it possible to live in this world without the operation of will? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To know joy one must go much deeper. Joy is not mere sensation. It requires extraordinary refinement of the mind, but not the refinement of the self that gathers more and more to itself. Such a self, such a man, can never understand this state of joy in which the enjoyer is not. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

A dialogue is very important. It is a form of communication in which question and answer continue till a question is left without an answer. Thus the question is suspended between the two persons involved in this answer and question. It is like a bud with untouched blossoms ... If the question is left totally untouched by thought, it then has its own answer because the questioner and answerer, as persons, have disappeared. This is a form of dialogue in which investigation reaches a certain point of intensity and depth, which then has a quality that thought can never reach. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Sir, when two people have the extraordinary quality of this state, words are not necessary. Where that quality of love exists, words become unnecessary. There is instant communication. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I am sure you have been brought up in the school of "must" and "must not" and hence, you have destroyed thought and feeling. You have been bound and crippled by systems, methods, by your teachers. So leave all those "musts" and "must nots. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

If you see that you are a bundle of memories and words, the restless monkey comes to an end. ~ Krishnamurti

Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. There, at that actual moment, there is total attention at the moment of danger, physical or psychological. When there is complete attention there is no fear. But the actual fact of inattention breeds fear; fear arises when there is an avoidance of the fact, a flight; then the very escape itself is fear. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Change in society is of secondary importance; that will come about naturally, inevitably, when you as a human being bring about the change in yourself. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If people who say they love their children meant it, would there be war? And would there be division of nationalities - would there be these separations? ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The idea is not love. The idea, the word is not love. But only when you have seen the whole movement of desire, attachment, pleasure, then out of that depth of perception comes this strange flower with its extraordinary perfume. That is love. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Meditation is to find out whether the brain, with all its activities, all its experiences, can be absolutely quiet. Not forced, because the moment you force, there again is duality, the entity that says, 'I would like to have marvellous experiences, therefore I must force my brain to be quiet' - you will never do it. But if you begin to inquire, watch, observe, listen to all the movements of thought, its conditioning, its pursuits, its fears, its pleasures, watch how the brain operates, then you will see that the brain becomes extraordinarily quiet; that quietness is not sleep but is tremendously active and therefore quiet. ~ Krishnamurti

If we are going to inquire into that, (religion, i.e. a life in which there is no fragmentation whatsoever) we must not only be free of all belief, but also we must be very clear about the distorting factor of all effort, direction and purpose. ~ Krishnamurti

Humility is unaware of the division of the superior and the inferior, of the Master and the pupil. As ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

If I condemn something, I do not understand it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

You know, in the case of most of us, the mind is noisy, everlastingly chattering to itself , soliloquizing or chattering about something, or trying to talk to itself, to convince itself of
something; it is always moving, noisy. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

*Only if you reject all the other paths can you discover your own path. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

Human thinking is born out of this neurological defect in the human species. Anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive. Thought is destructive. Thought is a protective mechanism. It draws frontiers around itself, and it wants to protect itself. It is for the same reason that we also draw lines on this planet and extend them as far as we can. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

From these prejudices there arises conflict, transient joys and suffering. But we are unconscious of this, unconscious that we are slaves to certain forms of tradition, to social and political environment, to false values. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

But inwardly we are as corrupt as the person who sits in an office and plans war-because, we want to be somebody in the family, in a group, in society, in the nation. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Freedom comes with self-knowledge, when the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances it has created for itself. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

What we call religion is merely organized belief, with its dogmas, rituals, mysteries and superstitions. Each religion has its own sacred book, its mediator, its priests and its ways of threatening and holding people.
Most of us have been conditioned to all this, which is considered religious education; but this conditioning sets man against man, it creates antagonism, not only among the believers, but also against those of other beliefs.
Though all religions assert that they worship God and say that we must love one another, they instill fear through their doctrines of reward and punishment, and through their competitive dogmas they perpetuate suspicion and antagonism. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Beware of the man who offers you a reward in this world or in the next. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Where there is love, do what you will, it will be right action. It will never bring conflict to one's life. In the flame of love, all fear is consumed. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love is a state of being, and in that state, the 'me', with its identifications, anxieties, and possessions is absent. Love cannot be, as long as the activities of the self, of the 'me', whether conscious or unconscious, continue to exist. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti