Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes (1895-1986)

“If I draw a conclusion, I act on an idea, on an image, on a symbol, which is the structure of thought, and so I am constantly preventing myself from having insight, from understanding things as they are.”

“You must give up all feeling of possession. Karma may take from yon the things which you like best — even the people whom you love most. Even then you must be cheerful — ready to part with anything and everything.”

“He who would walk upon the Path must learn to think for himself, for superstition is one of the greatest evils in the world, one of the fetters from which you mast utterly free yourself.”

“Karma takes no account of custom; and the karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all... The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport".”

“The more I understand the problem, the more significance there is in it. To understand, I must approach it quietly, not impose on the problem my ideas, my feelings of like and dislike. Then the problem will reveal its significance. Why is it not possible to have tranquillity of the mind right from the beginning?”

“Think of the awful slaughter produced by the superstition that animals should be sacrificed, and by the still more cruel superstition that man needs flesh for food.”

“The karma of cruelty is the most terrible of all. The fate of the cruel must fall also upon all who go out intentionally to kill God's creatures, and call it "sport".”

“Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally.”

“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 the key or the door to open, except yourself.”

“I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others. This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley. If you would attain to the mountain-top you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.”

“Krishnamurti was, on one hand, a typically self-alienated Indian intellectual criticizing his own culture. But, on the other hand, he possessed a genuine meditative mind in harmony with the same tradition, a strange contradiction but one that was appealing to people who could not relate to traditions. He had important teachings on perception and on the workings of the mind and emotions that added much depth to my meditation.”

“He has received divine honors in India and in the West. I had a long interview with him, found him of average intelligence, of rather lovable disposition, of mediocre spiritual intuitions, and heard him swear in good, round English! I came away feeling that if he is all we, as a race, have to look to in order to get out of the muddle we are in, then God pity us.”

“The qualifications for admission to the Great White Brotherhood, which have to be acquired in the course of the work in the earlier part of the Path, are of a very definite character, and are always essentially the same, although they have been described in many different terms during the last twenty-five centuries. But the latest and simplest account of them is to be found in Mr. J. Krishnamurti’s wonderful little book. At the Feet of the Master, Although Mr. Krishnamurti puts this book before the world, the words which it contains are almost entirely those of the Master Kuthumi. ‘‘ These are not my words,” the author says in the Foreword; " they are the words of the Master who taught me.” When the book was written, Mr. Krishnamurti’s body was thirteen years old, and it was necessary for the Master’s plans that the knowledge requisite for Initiation should be conveyed to him as quickly as possible. The words contained in the book are those in which the Master tried to convey the whole essence of the necessary teaching in the simplest and briefest form.”

“Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.”

“Few modern thinkers have integrated psychology, philosophy, and religion so seamlessly as Krishnamurti.”

“Never one to endear himself to schoolmasters, Krishna was punished brutally for his inadequacies and branded an imbecile.”