THE PHILOSOPHY
OF BRUCE LEE

 

At the Bruce Lee Educational Foundation we respect the role that ideas have taken in shaping history - for better and for worse. Good ideas beget good achievement - but great ideas beget great achievement. Bruce Lee's teachings reveal to us the importance of using our own minds and independent judgment - not only in the realm of art but in all aspects of life (since all knowledge is interconnected) - to formulate and follow through on realizing our ideas for growth and personal and/or corporate prosperity.
Bruce Lee held that it was man's mind - the creative faculty - that separates our species from all other life forms. Consequently, it was only when man applied his defining attribute to life issues that he would be envisioning and fulfilling his goals and realizing his ambitions. A successful society, then, is one in which man's creativity is allowed to flourish, thereby allowing new approaches to situations to manifest, new directions to be explored and new data to be integrated into our existing knowledge banks. The Bruce Lee Educational Foundation takes ideas seriously for ideas are a man's defining attribute - allowing him to create his future and to define his own existence - rather than have to simply follow the herd or live the same day over and over again for the rest of his life. And, by extension, ideas are a touchstone of a nation's potential for success.

As Bruce Lee pointed out, the reason that America was as successful as she is, was because of the value she placed on the role of ideas of her citizens.
"It is a fact that labor and thrift produce a competence, but fortune, in the sense of wealth, is the reward of the man who can think of something that hasn't been thought of before.
In every industry, in every profession, ideas are what America is looking for. Ideas have made America what she is, and one good idea will make a man what he wants to be."
Ideas, in other words, define a man and, by extension, define the society and country in which he lives.