Life Ahead Quotes

“What is the point of being educated, of learning to read and write, if you are just going to carry on like a machine? But that is what your parents want, and it is what the world wants. The world does not want you to think, it does not want you to be free to find out, because then you would be a dangerous citizen, you would not fit into the established pattern. A free human being can never feel that he belongs to any particular country, class, or type of thinking. Freedom means freedom at every level, right through, and to think only along a particular line is not freedom.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“an idealist is a hypocrite, because he is always trying to become what he is not, instead of being and understanding what he is.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“When you love, you are not lonely. The sense of loneliness arises only when you are frightened of being alone and of not knowing what to do. When you are controlled by ideas, isolated by beliefs, then fear is inevitable; and when you are afraid, you are completely blind.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“If you had love in your heart, you would show respect to those who have nothing and also to those who have everything; you would neither be afraid of those who have, nor disregard those who have not. Respect in the hope of reward is the outcome of fear. In love there is no fear.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“When you are young you are curious to know all about everything, why the sun shines, what the stars are, all about the moon and the world around us; but as we grow older, knowledge becomes a mere collection of information without any feeling.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“the question is not how to get rid of fear, but how to awaken the intelligence with which to face and to understand and go beyond fear.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Peace can come only when there is love.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“To have intelligence there must be freedom, and you cannot be free if you are constantly being urged to become like some hero, for then the hero is important and not you.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Solitude helps the mind to see itself clearly as in a mirror, and to free itself from the vain endeavor of ambition with all its complexities, fears, and frustrations, which are the outcome of self-centered activity.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Happiness comes when you are doing something because you really love to do it, and not because it gives you riches or makes you a prominent person.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“To compare is the very nature of a mind that is not awake to discover what is true.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Most people are afraid to stand alone; they are afraid to think things out for themselves, afraid to feel deeply, to explore and discover the whole meaning of life.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“To understand the whole operation of one’s own mind requires a great deal of insight, a great deal of inquiry without condemnation.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“The important thing is first to find out what you are afraid of, to understand it and not run away from it.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Peace is not something petty, created by the mind; it is enormously great, infinitely extensive, and it can be understood only when the heart is full.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Through a narrow window we can see only part of the sky, and not the whole vastness, the magnificence of it.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Your parents and society use that word duty as a means of molding you, shaping you according to their particular idiosyncrasies, their habits of thought, their likes and dislikes, hoping thereby to guarantee their own safety.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“following of authority in any form, whether self-imposed or established from outside, as well as any form of imitation, copying, is destructive of incentive, of creativeness, and that it blocks the discovery of what is true.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“In a deep river there is richness and many fish can live; but the shallow pool is soon dried up by the strong sun, and nothing remains except mud and dirt. For most of us, love is an extraordinarily difficult thing to understand because our lives are very shallow.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“The mind can only gather, accumulate, deny, assert, remember, pursue. Peace is absolutely essential, because without peace we cannot live creatively.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Peace is of the heart, not of the mind. To know peace you have to find out what beauty is.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“In understanding what beauty is, we shall know love, for the understanding of beauty is the peace of the heart.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“it is very important, while you are young, to be real revolutionaries—which means not accepting anything, but inquiring into all these things to find out what is true. Only then can you create a new world.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Self-reliance brings a certain freedom in which you discover; and that freedom is denied to you when you are comparing.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Do you know what a free mind is? Have you ever observed your own mind? It is not free, is it? You are always watching to see what your friends say about you. Your mind is like a house enclosed by a fence or by barbed wire. In that state no new thing can take place. A new thing can happen only when there is no fear. And it is extremely difficult for the mind to be free of fear, because that implies being really free of the desire to imitate, to follow, free of the desire to amass wealth or to conform to a tradition—which does not mean that you do something outrageous.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“there must be freedom while we are still very young—not freedom to do what we like, but freedom to understand very deeply our own instincts and urges.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“The individual has to awaken his intelligence, not through any form of discipline, resistance, compulsion, coercion, but through freedom.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Real peace is as creative and as pure as war is destructive; and to find that peace, one must understand beauty.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“Any feeling of malice or envy, however slight it may be, is also destructive of this creative understanding without which there is no happiness.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning

“process of comparison and condemnation prevents you from observing, studying. So a real student is one who observes everything in life, outwardly as well as inwardly, without comparing, approving, or condemning.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti, Life Ahead: On Learning and the Search for Meaning