20 Thought-Provoking Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

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In Balanced Achievement’s Quote 20 series, we illuminate 20 inspirational quotes about a particular topic or 20 memorable quotes said by a historically significant individual. In this article, we turn our attention to one of India’s greatest philosophers by exploring 20 thought-provoking Jiddu Krishnamurti quotes.

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Throughout modern history, there have been few men who’ve reflectively moved the world with their wisdom filled words like the one and only Jiddu Krishnamurti. It was at just 14 years old when the now immortalized Indian philosopher first began thinking abstractly about human existence, after being clairvoyantly recognized as the World Teacher of the Christian Theosophy movement, and he’d continue to hone his intellectual prowess over the remaining 76 years of his life. Although Krishnamurti would reject the idea that he was a divine prophet in his early 30s and come to see all religious doctrines as a hindrance to humanity, he’d incessantly remain committed to theorizing about topics such as spirituality, meditation, and enlightenment.

Over the course of his life, Krishnamurti would write 18 books, including Think on These Things, Freedom from the Known, and The Awakening of Intelligence, and share his teachings on truth being a pathless land, in addition to others related to topics such as education, fear, and love, while lecturing around the globe. As you’ll soon discover by exploring these 20 contemplative quotes, there have been few philosophers who’ve given us a collection of eternally thought-provoking insights that can match that of 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 the key or the door to open, except yourself.”

The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love.”

The crisis is not out there in the world, it is within our own consciousness.”

True education is to learn how to think, not what to think. If you know how to think, if you really have that capacity, then you are a free human being – free of dogmas, superstitions, ceremonies – and therefore you can find out what religion is.”

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.”

Religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief; because your belief projects what you think God ought to be, what you think ought to be true. If you believe God is love, God is good, God is this or that, your very belief prevents you from understanding what is God, what is true.”

Real learning comes about when the competitive spirit has ceased.”

Fear begins and ends with the desire to be secure; inward and outward security, with the desire to be certain, to have permanency. The continuity of permanence is sought in every direction, in virtue, in relationship, in action, in experience, in knowledge, in outward and inward things. To find security and be secure is the everlasting cry. It is this insistent demand that breeds fear.”

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.”

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

Is there a thinker apart from thought?”

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.”

Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day.”

Life is both pleasure and pain, is it not? But why should we cling to pleasure and avoid pain? Why not merely live with both? If you cling to pleasure what happens? You get attached, do you not?”

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.”

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.”

You are this, which does not satisfy, so you want to be that. If there were an understanding of this, would that come into being? Because you do not understand this, you create that, hoping through that to understand or to escape from this.”

Enlightenment is an accident, but some activities make you accident-prone.”

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.”

Only when the mind is still, tranquil, not expecting or grasping or resisting a single thing, is it possible to see what is true. It is the truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.”