Jiddu Krishnamurti is one of the most famous and influential Indian philosopher, speaker, and writer of the 20th century. At the same time, he denied belonging to any nationality, caste, religion or philosophical trend and spent most of his long life wandering around the world as a public speaker. Today we have selected the 10 most thought-provoking Jiddu Krishnamurti quotes about love, freedom, and religion.
10 Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes
#1
“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.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#2
“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.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#3
“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.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#4
“It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#5
“When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#6
“We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#7
“To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another is to die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#8
“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.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#9
“Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, `That is an oak tree’, or `that is a banyan tree’, the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? To come in contact with the tree you have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#10
“You say you love your wife. You depend on her; she has given you her body, her emotions, her encouragement, a certain feeling of security and well-being. Then she turns away from you; she gets bored or goes off with someone else, and your whole emotional balance is destroyed, and this disturbance, which you don’t like, is called jealousy. There is pain in it, anxiety, hate and violence. So what you are really saying is, ‘As long as you belong to me I love you but the moment you don’t I begin to hate you.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti