To live is to find out for yourself what is true, and you can do this only when there is freedom, when there is continuous revolution inwardly, within yourself.
Interpretation
True understanding comes from personal exploration and the freedom to question oneself constantly.
This quote by Jiddu Krishnamurti emphasizes the importance of personal discovery and inner freedom in seeking truth. It suggests that genuine understanding can only arise when individuals engage in continuous self-reflection and are willing to challenge their own beliefs, leading to an ongoing personal revolution that facilitates personal growth and enlightenment.
In practice
During a personal development workshop, a speaker used this quote to encourage participants to explore their beliefs.
The following of authority is the denial of intelligence. [It] may help us temporarily to cover up our difficulties and problems; but to avoid a problem is only to intensify it, and in the process, self-knowledge and freedom are abandoned.
In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.
If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires.
If you have this extraordinary thing going in your life, then it is everything; then you become the teacher, the disciple, the neighbour, the beauty of the cloud - you are all that, and that is love.
Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life - perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it.
All of us have been trained by education and environment to seek personal gain and security and to fight for ourselves. Though we cover it over with pleasant phrases, we have been educated for various professions within a system which is based on exploitation and acquisitive fear.
There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.
Modern travelling is not travelling at all; it is merely being sent to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.
I'm not alive. People believe memories grow vague, are erased by time, since nothing endures against the passage of time. That's the difference; time does not pass over me, over us. It doesn't erase anything, doesn't undo it. I'm not a live. I died in Auschwitz but no one knows it.
We act not for ourselves but for the whole human race. The event of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self - government.
We oppose the death penalty not just for what it does to those guilty of heinous crimes, but for what it does to all of us: It offers the tragic illusiion that we can defend life by taking life.
Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.