This is a curated selection of Jiddu Krishnamurti quotes (personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Jiddu Krishnamurti’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
25 Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Thought, Self-Inquiry, Observer is Observed, & More
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Mind & Thought
“Belief has no place where truth is concerned … Belief brings atrophy of the brain … As long as the mind clings to belief, it is held in a prison … Psychologically, one has built a prison for oneself, by one’s own desires, by one’s own anxieties, loneliness, and so on.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Thought is very limited because it’s born out of knowledge … Knowledge is never complete about anything.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“A Hindu has been programmed for the last 5,000 years to be a Hindu—or in this country you are being programmed as British, or as a Catholic, or a Protestant. We are all programmed up to a certain extent.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“The explanation is not the fact … The word is not the thing. The description is not the described … The word, the book—whatever is printed—is not the the real thing. They’re only a means of communication by people who have seen something and then want to communicate to others.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Truth cannot be told to you—the word is not that … Truth is something which is not to be measured, and it has no path to it … Truth is not a fixed point, so you can’t have a path to it.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Thought has created God, and then thought worships the image which thought has created—which is, to worship oneself and call it ‘God’ … If you loved, that very love is God, that very love is sacred. You won’t go outside to look for God … One has to be free of all the illusions that thought has created to see something really sacred … The ultimate goal, if you can put it that way, is to find that which is completely sacred, totally uncontaminated by thought.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Separation & Society
“Society is an abstraction of our personal relationship … The problem is not changing society … The real problem is: can there be a real mutation in the human mind? That is the real question. When that takes place, society will look after itself.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Is society healthy, that an individual should return to it? Has not society itself helped to make the individual unhealthy? Of course, the unhealthy must be made healthy, that goes without saying; but why should the individual adjust himself to an unhealthy society? If he is healthy, he will not be a part of it. Without first questioning the health of society, what is the good of helping misfits to conform to society?” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“How can we help children to be intelligent, and free, and responsible human beings in today’s world? Are the parents intelligent and free? Are the teachers intelligent, and free, and responsible? Is the society, the educational system, helping them to be free, and responsible, and intelligent?” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“What you are, the world is. And without your transformation, there can be no transformation of the world.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Propaganda is mere repetition of another’s truth; it ceases to be propaganda when you yourself have discovered the truth.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“The ‘me’ is the mischief in the world … Division exists because of the ‘me’—the content of consciousness.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“The physical revolution, which one is advocating all over the world at the present time, doesn’t bring about a fundamental change in man … We are talking of a revolution—not physical, but the psychological revolution … We are taking a journey together into the whole psychological structure of man—because in the understanding of that structure and the meaning of it, we can then, perhaps, bring about a change in society.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Self-Inquiry
“To find out who you are you have to inquire … Our difficulty is we listen to a lot of things—we know a great deal, we have searched, asked, read, sought the advice of others, wandered the earth to find out what it is all about—but we never ask or demand of ourselves serious, deep questions. We always ask superficial questions, and so we make our life very superficial. But, if you asked questions that demand answers from yourself—so that you exercise your brain, your feelings, your whole attention—then you begin to discover for yourself without being told by anybody.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“If I tell you who I am, what does it matter? … It’s like reading a menu at the window. You have to go into the restaurant and eat food. Merely standing outside and reading the menu won’t satisfy your hunger. So, to tell you who I am is really quite meaningless.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Discontent is the way of inquiry, but there can be no inquiry if the mind is tethered to tradition, to ideals. Inquiry is the flame of attention. By discontent I mean that state in which the mind understands what is, the actual, and constantly inquires to discover further … One has to come to discover the whole process of knowing oneself. For the knowing of oneself is the beginning and the end of all misery.” — 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 … If you want to discover the truth in that vital process which is your own life, you will have to inquire deeply into all these things … Unless one goes into this matter very seriously, really taking trouble, deep interest, with a passion, I’m afraid one will not be able to go very far—far in the sense not in time or in space but within oneself very deeply.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Teaching is not the mere imparting of knowledge but the cultivation of an inquiring mind … 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
“You have to do this yourself. And, as most of us are second-hand or third-hand human beings, it is going to be very difficult to put away totally all that has been imposed on our minds by the religious professionals or the scientific professionals. We have to find out for ourselves.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Observer & Observed
“In the gap between the Subject and the Object lies the entire misery of humankind … When there is the observer, then there is space between the observer and the observed. That space is time because there is a distance. That time is the quality of the observer—who is the past, who is the accumulated knowledge … Now, can you observe without the observer?” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“‘Observer’ is the image which has been created. He is the entity that judges, compares, all that. Then, he looks at an object, his own experience, or his relationship with another. So, the observer is the image looking at the image which he has created about the other. So, the relationship between the observer and the observed is not a relationship, it is two images looking at each other. Now, when the observer has no image at all, then the observer is the observed. ‘What is’ is the observer, not the observer is looking at ‘what is.’” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“The observer is the thinker. And, we have given such tremendous importance to the thinker, haven’t we? We live by thought, we do things by thought, we plan our life by thought, our action is motivated by thought. And, thought is worshipped throughout the world as the most extraordinarily important thing … Thought has separated itself as the thinker. The thinker says, ‘These thoughts are no good, these are better; this ideal is better than that ideal, this belief is better than that belief’. It is all the product of thought—thought which has made itself separate, fragmented itself as the thinker, as the experiencer.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Observation is to watch oneself—never allowing a single thought to escape without watching it, being aware of it, giving your whole attention to that one thought … Watching is not egocentric movement—whereas thinking about yourself is egotistic, self-centered activity … Observing has no time; the other is caught in time.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“It is very important, imperative, that one understand oneself deeply, understand all the responses, the conditioning, the various temperaments, characteristics, tendencies—just to watch without the observer … To observe without the observer. That is the act of learning.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
“When one realizes the observer is the observed, the controller is the controlled, the experiencer is the experience—when one actually realizes it, not intellectually/verbally but profoundly—that very perception stops the mind.” — Jiddu Krishnamurti
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