I read this book for the first time as I was traveling through Mexico and it made a lot of sense. I was at a strange place in my life reexamining faith and superstition and reading Jiddu Krishnamurti’s book Freedom From The Known was liberating. A lot of these excerpts still ring true.
What follows is a collection of Jiddu Krishnamurti quotes taken from the book Freedom From The Known (you can purchase it by clicking here).
Faith invariably breeds violence. (p.9)
The primary cause of disorder is the seeking of reality promised by another. (p.11)
Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. (p.12)
The whole history of man is written in ourselves. (p.13)
We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives. (p.14)
Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. (p.15)
It seems to me that all ideologies are utterly idiotic. (p.16)
If I were foolish enough to give you a system and if you were foolish enough to follow it, you would merely be copying, imitating, conforming, accepting, and when you do that you have set up in yourself the authority of another and hence the conflict between you and that authority. (p.17)
If you try to study yourself according to another you will always be a secondhand human being. (p.17)
Order imposed from without must always breed disorder. (p.17)
If you reject all authority it means you are no longer afraid. (p.18)
When you reject something false which you have been carrying about with you for generations, …you have more energy, you have more capacity, you have more drive. …if you do not feel this, then you have not thrown off the burden, you have not discarded the dead weight of authority. But when you have thrown it off you have ….no fear of making a mistake, no fear of doing right or wrong. (p.18)
We need tremendous amount of energy and we dissipate it through fear but when there is this energy which comes from throwing off every form of fear, that energy itself produces the radical inward revolution. You don’t have to do a thing about it. (p.18)
Freedom is entirely different from revolt. (p.19)
All authority of any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive, evil thing. Leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. (p.21)
If you do not follow somebody you feel very lonely. Be lonely then. Why are you frightened of being alone? Because you are faced with yourself as you are. (p.21)
I have to study myself in actuality – as I am, not as I wish to be. (p.22)
Learning is a constant movement without the past. (p.23)
We may be sensitive about certain things that touch us personally but to be completely sensitive to all the implications of life demands that there be no separation between the organism and the psyche. It is a total movement. (p.23)