Jiddu Krishnamurti quotes:

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.

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.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

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.

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.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

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.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

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.

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

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.

Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.

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.

Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. 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, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

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

The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.

Your belief in God is merely an escape from your monotonous, stupid and cruel life.

Analysis does not transform consciousness.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man."

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.

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.

Love is the most practical thing in the world. To love, to be kind, not to be greedy, not to be ambitious, not to be influenced by people but to think for yourself-these are all very practical things, and they will bring about a practical, happy society.

The ambitious man has never found his true vocation...

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

Most of us waste our energy through chattering - endlessly chattering, gossiping, criticising, backbiting.

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.

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."

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."

It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.

Identification with the rag called the national flag is an emotional and sentimental factor and for that factor you are willing to kill another - and that is called, the love of your country, love of the neighbor . . .? One can see that where sentiment and emotion come in, love is not.

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.

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

It is very easy to conform to what your society or your parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing; but that is not living...To live is to find out for yourself what is true...

I have only one purpose: to make people free, to urge them towards freedom, to help them to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give them eternal happiness, will give them the unconditional realization of Self.

War is the spectacular and bloody projection of our everyday living. We precipitate war out of our daily lives; and without a transformation in ourselves, there are bound to be national and racial antagonisms, the childish quarreling over ideologies, the multiplication of soldiers, the saluting of flags, and all the many brutalities that go to create organized murder.

It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence.

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.

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.

The flowering of love is meditation.

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

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.

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.

A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person, because he conforms to a pattern; he repeats phrases and thinks in a groove.

To follow implies not only the denying of one's own clarity, investigation, integrity and honesty , but it also implies that your motive in following, your motive is a reward .

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.

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.

Teaching is not the mere imparting of knowledge but the cultivation of an inquiring mind.

Is insight dependent on a material process? Has insight a cause?

The more you know yourself, the more clarity there is.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action, which is relationship.

There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery.

Energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. That is all life is ... Matter and energy are interrelated.

Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.

The first thing to realize in meditation is that there is no authority, that the mind must be completely free to examine, to observe, to learn. And so there is no following, no accepting, no obedience.

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

What sex gives you momentarily is the total abandonment of yourself, then you are back again with your turmoil, so you want a repetition over and over again of that state in which there is no worry, no problem, no self.

In nothingness, there is everything, energy. The ending is a beginning.

Freedom is now or never.

Goodness is not in the backyard of the individual nor in the open field of the collective; goodness flowers only in freedom from both.

But the healing of the mind is something totally different. That healing gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.

Pain itself destroys pain. Suffering itself frees man from suffering.

Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on.

Without an integrated understanding of life, our individual and collective problems will only deepen and extend. The purpose of education isn't to produce mere scholars, technicians and job hunters, but integrated men and women who are free of fear; for only between such human beings can there be enduring peace.

Until a radical change takes place and we wipe out all nationalities, all ideologies, all religious divisions, and establish a global relationship - psychologically first, inwardly before organizing the outer - we shall go on with wars.

Religion, politics, society are exploiting you, and you are being conditioned by them; you are being forced in a particular direction. You are not human beings; you are mere cogs in a machine. You suffer patiently, submitting to the cruelties of environment, when you, individually, have the possibilities of changing them.

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

It is only in virtue that you can discover, that you can live - not in the cultivation of a virtue, which merely brings about respectability, not understanding and freedom.

From innumerable complexities we must grow to simplicity; we must become simple in our inward life and in our outward needs.

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.

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

Religion is the sense of comprehension of the totality of existence.

Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.

To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.

But what is the point of education at all? Is it merely to cultivate the capacity of memory, passing examinations and getting a job and all the rest, or is education something entirely different? Something more!

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

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

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.

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

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.

We are so sluggish in our mentality that we think the world's problems are not our business, that they have to be resolved by the United Nations or by substituting new leaders for the old.

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

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.

The man who is seeking truth is free of all societies and cultures.

The significance of life is living.

Free yourself from the psychological structure of society, which is to free yourself from the essence of conflict.

It is necessary for all of us to awaken in ourselves this spirit of cooperation, for then it will not be a mere plan or agreement which causes us to work together, but an extraordinary feeling of togetherness, the sense of joy in being and doing together without any thought of reward or punishment.

You can be creative only when there is abandonment-which means, really, there is no sense of compulsion, no fear of not being, of not gaining, of not arriving. Then there is great austerity, simplicity, and with it there is love.

Freedom lies outside the pattern of society; but to be free of that pattern you have to understand the whole content of it, which is to understand your own mind.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

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.

The crisis is not in the outward technological advancement, but rather in the way we think, and the way we live, and the way we feel. I think that is where a revolution must take place.

I don't mind what happens. That is the essence of inner freedom. It is a timeless spiritual truth: release attachment to outcomes, deep inside yourself, you'll feel good no matter what.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

In obedience there is always fear, and fear darkens the mind.

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.

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

This is love: the flowering of love is meditation.

Only in relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction, and certainly not in isolation.

Throughout life, from childhood, from school until we die, we are taught to compare ourselves with another; yet when I compare myself with another I am destroying myself.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time.

If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there's no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for "sport," for food, or for knowledge. Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty. You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places but you are a killer and so lose their friendship. You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband.

How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desire, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice.

Have you ever noticed a tree standing naked against the sky, How beautiful it is? All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness There is a poem, there is a song. Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring. When the spring comes, it again fills the tree with The music of many leaves, Which in due season fall and are blown away. And this is the way of life.

Here is my secret: I don't mind what happens.

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another... It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our minds and our way of life.

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.

There can only be a relationship between human beings when we accept what is, not what should be.

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.

You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, "What did that man pick up?" "He picked up a piece of the truth," said the devil. "That is a very bad business for you, then," said his friend. "Oh, not at all," the devil replied, "I am going to help him organize it."

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.

The mind has to be empty to see clearly.

If you come across fear, stare it in its eyes. Face it and you will notice that fear fades away.

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.

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.

Awareness is observation without choice, condemnation, or justification. Awareness is silent observation from which there arises understanding without the experiencer and the experienced. In this awareness, which is passive, the problem or the cause is given an opportunity to unfold itself and so give its full significance. In awareness there is no end in view to be gained, and there is no becoming, the 'me' and the 'mine' not being given the continuity.

Look what is happening in the world - we are being conditioned by society, by the culture we live in, and that culture is the product of man. There is nothing holy, or divine, or eternal about culture.