Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes on Self-Knowledge

• Self-knowledge is not something acquired from a book or from a guru or teacher. Self-knowledge begins in understanding oneself from moment to moment, and that understanding requires one's full attention to be given to each thought at any particular moment without an end in view, because there cannot be complete attention when there is condemnation or justification.
   
• To understand yourself is to understand the giver of values. Without understanding yourself, there is no renunciation of the world; without self-knowledge there can be only escape, called renunciation, which gives birth to endless problems and miseries.
   
• To comprehend the whole we must first understand ourselves. The root of understanding lies in oneself, and without the understanding of oneself, there is no comprehension of the world; for the world is oneself. The other - the friend, the relation, the enemy, the neighbor, near or far - is yourself. Self-knowledge is the beginning of right thinking, and in the process of self-knowledge, the infinite is discovered.
   
• In this process of self-knowledge, right thinking comes into being; and
  right thinking frees the mind from craving. The freedom from craving is
  virtue
   
• Self-knowledge has no beginning and no end. It is a constant process of discovery, and what is discovered is true, and truth is liberating, creative.
   
• Self-knowledge is not a process of the continuity of thinking but the diminishing, the ending of thinking. But you cannot end thinking by any trick, by denial, by control, by discipline, and so on. If you do, you are still caught in the field of thought. Thinking can only come to an end when you know the total content of the thinker, and so one begins to see how important it is to have self-knowledge.
   
• Without self-knowledge there is no individuality
   
• A mind that has self-knowledge is learning, whereas a mind that merely applies acquired knowledge to itself and thinks it is self-knowledge is merely accumulating. A mind that accumulates can never learn.
   
• We have this problem of bringing about the true individual. Such an individual cannot be created except through self-knowledge, and you have to learn about the self. There cannot be any condemnation of what you find and there cannot be any identification with what you find, for any identification, justification, or condemnation is the result of accumulation, and therefore you cease to learn.
   
• There is no path to reality. Reality is not to be found through any path; it is to be found through the uncharted sea of self-knowledge; the immeasurable is not to be measured by the path of the known.
   
• Right thinking alone can bring about right action; self-knowledge yields right thinking.