Jiddu Krishnamurti

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.

Truth does not belong to an individual.

Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.

Meditation is like the breeze that comes in when you leave the window open; but if you deliberately keep it open, deliberately invite it to come, it will never appear.

The becoming still can never be the being still; only with the death of becoming is there being.

Identification prevents and perverts the flow of thought-feeling.

Now, when you are aware, you see the whole process of your thinking and action, but it can happen only when there is no condemnation. That is. When I condemn something, I do not understand it.

That is, sir, there can only be communication, communion, when you and I are on the same level, and with the same intensity, at the same time.

The real student is studying, learning, inquiring, exploring, not just until he is twenty or twenty-five, but throughout life.

So through identification you have pleasure and pain.

I do not know if you have ever noticed that the more you struggle to understand, the less you understand any problem. But, the moment you cease to struggle and let the problem tell you the whole story, give all its significance - then there is understanding, which means, obviously, that to understand, the mind must be quiet.

There is no tranquility in ideas.

Surely love has nothing to do with the mind, it is not the product of the mind; love is entirely independent of calculation, of thought.

If I do not understand myself, the whole complexity of myself, I have no basis for thinking.

The intellect is not the means of creation, and creation does not take place through the functioning of the intellect; on the contrary, there is creation when the intellect is silent.

There is no partial sensitivity; either it is the state of one's whole being, total consciousness or it is not there at all

Transformation can only take place immediately; the revolution is now, not tomorrow.

The fundamental factor of self-deception is this constant desire to be something in this world and in the world hereafter.

The real is near, you do not have to seek it; and a man who seeks truth will never find it. Truth is in what is - and that is the beauty of it. But the moment you conceive it, the moment you seek it, you begin to struggle; and a man who struggles cannot understand. That is why we have to be still, observant, passively aware.

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.

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.