Jiddu Krishnamurti best quotes, aphorisms, ideas, thoughts and words of wisdom by this great stateless philosopher, orator, and mystic of Indian ethnicity.
A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.
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 . . .
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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
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.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
A man who says, ‘I want to change, tell me how to’, seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not. He wants an authority whom he hopes will bring about order in himself. But can authority ever bring about inward order? Order imposed from without must always breed disorder.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Action has meaning only in relationship, and without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. You have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Analysis does not transform consciousness.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact what we really are.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
And the point is, is it possible for the mind to be totally free from suffering and yet not become indifferent, callous, irresponsible, but to have that passion, the intensity, the energy that freedom brings, freedom from suffering.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Be a light unto oneself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Begin where you are. Read every word, every phrase, every paragraph of the mind, as it operates through thought.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?
Jiddu Krishnamurti
But if one observes, one will see that the body has its own intelligence; it requires a great deal of intelligence to observe the intelligence of the body.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
But if you have no relationship with the living things on this earth, you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
But there’s a sacredness which is not of thought, nor of a feeling resuscitated by thought. It is not recognizable by thought nor can it be utilized by thought. Thought cannot formulate it. But there’s a sacredness, untouched by any symbol or word. It is not communicable. It is a fact.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Depuis des siècles, nous nous faisons alimenter par nos maîtres, par deviennent automatiques. Nous pouvons facilement le constater
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Do not think about yourself, but be aware of the thought, emotion, or action that makes you think of yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Do you want to know what my secret is? I don’t mind what happens.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Fear is always in relation to something; it does not exist by itself. There is fear of what happened yesterday in relation to the possibility of its repetition tomorrow; there is always a fixed point from which relationship takes place.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas, and beliefs.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Find out for yourself what are the possesions and ideals that you do not desire. By knowing what you do not want, by elimination, you will unburden the mind, and only then will it understand the essential which is ever there.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something, and it is only such love that can know freedom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.
Jiddu 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
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
Happiness is strange; it comes when you are not seeking it. When you are not making an effort to be happy, then unexpectedly, mysteriously, happiness is there, born of purity, of a loveliness of being.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Happy is the man who is nothing.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the heart of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Human beings, each one, right through the world, go through great agonies, the more sensitive, the more alert, the more observant, the greater the suffering, the anxiety, the extraordinary sense of insoluble problems.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
I hope that you will listen, but not with the memory of what you already know; and this is very difficult to do. You listen to something, and your mind immediately reacts with its knowledge, its conclusions, its opinions, its past memories. It listens, inquiring for a future understanding.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. … The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
I think that will be enough, won’t it?
Jiddu Krishnamurti
If there is no order in your relationship with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with your neighbour – whether that neighbour is near or very far away – forget about meditation…
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.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
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
If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either they key or the door to open, except yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
In our relationship with children and young people, we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can be quickly repaired, but with living beings who are impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have great understanding, the strength of patience and love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
In the space which thought creates around itself there is no love. This space divides man from man, and in it is all the becoming, the battle of life, the agony and fear. Meditation is the ending of this space, the ending of the me.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is a great art to have an abundance of knowledge and experience – to know the richness of life, the beauty of existence, the struggles, the miseries, the laughter, the tears – and yet keep your mind very simple; and you can have a simple mind only when you know how to love.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is only in alert silence that truth can be.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It’s strange that though every experience, state, is utterly different, it is still the same movement; though it seems to change, it is still the changeless.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Life is a movement, a constant movement in relationship; and thought, trying to capture that movement in terms of the past, as memory, is afraid of life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.
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
Most of us waste this extraordinary thing called life. We have lived forty or sixty years, have gone to the office, engaged ourselves in social activity, escaping in various forms, and at the end of it, we have nothing but an empty, dull, stupid life, a wasted life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Observation without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Order cannot possibly be brought about through conformity to a pattern, under any circumstances.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Passion is a rather frightening thing because if you have passion you don’t know where it will take you.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness, and conflict comes when you seek consolation, forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees, you may have a series of letters after your name and land a good job, but then what? What is the point of it all if in the process your mind becomes dull, weary, stupid?
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The description is not the described; I can describe the mountain, but the description is not the mountain, and if you are caught up in the description, as most people are, then you will never see the mountain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The end is the beginning of all things, suppressed and hidden, awaiting to be released through the rhythm of pain and pleasure.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The ending is the beginning, and the beginning is the first step, and the first step is the only step.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The flowering of love is meditation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The mind has to be empty to see clearly.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.
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
The observer is the observed.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The significance of life is living.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
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.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
The word ‘innocence’ means a mind that is incapable of being hurt.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
There is no ideal in observation. When you have an ideal, you cease to observe, you are then merely approximating the present to the idea, and therefore there is duality, conflict, and all the rest of it. The mind has to be in the state when it can see, observe. The experience of the observation is really an astonishing state. In that there is no duality. The mind is simply – aware.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Thought is so cunning, so clever, that it distorts everything for its own convenience.
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
To look is important. We look to immediate things and out of immediate necessities to the future, coloured by the past. Our seeing is very limited and our eyes are accustomed to near things.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine…
Jiddu Krishnamurti
To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect … Your have to be your own teacher and your own disciple. You have to question everything that man has accepted as valuable, as necessary.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Truth is more in the process than in the result.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
We carry about us the burden of what thousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. To abandon all that is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young – not in time or age, but young, innocent, alive at whatever age – and only such a mind can see that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words.
Jiddu 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.
What has validity is your living, not what happens tomorrow.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
What you are the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques and churches become important.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
When there is an abeyance of that, when the reaction is suspended, when there is an interval, then you will find that the new brain acts, and it is only the new brain that can understand, not the old brain.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
When we suffer we have made it into a personal affair. We shut out all the suffering of mankind.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
When you once see something as false which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human, then you can never go back to it.
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
Why do you want to read others’ books when there is the book of yourself?
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Without freedom from the past, there is no freedom at all, because the mind is never new, fresh, innocent.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Woke up this morning, rather early, with a sense of a mind that had penetrated into unknown depths. It was as though the mind itself was going into itself, deeply and widely and the journey seemed to have been without movement. And there was this experience of immensity in abundance and a richness that was incorruptible.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You can only be afraid of what you think you know.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You can only listen when the mind is quiet, when the mind doesn’t react immediately, when there is an interval between your reaction and what is being said. Then, in that interval there is a quietness, there is a silence in which alone there is a comprehension which is not intellectual understanding.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You must look most intimately and discover for yourself; then it is your own, not somebody else’s, not something that you have been told, because there is no teacher and no follower.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You can also read:
Jiddu Krishnamurti reflections
Jalal al-Din Rumi quotes and aphorisms
