Jiddu Krishnamurti Quotes

Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence. When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.

When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence.

I am from Scotland, and I am Christian, not Muslim.

I don't see myself as either Irish or American, I'm a New Yorker.

We put labels on people and fight wars over them. If we truly want harmony, we have to get past the labels.

One is a member of a country, a profession, a civilization, a religion. One is not just a man.

I have always thought of myself as a Czechoslovak Catholic.

But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.

Being Indian is not blood as much as it is culture.

We are Englishmen; that is one good fact.

The difference between a nation and a nationality is clear, but it is not always observed. Likeness between members is the essence of nationality, but the members of a nation may be very different. A nation may be composed of many nationalities, as some of the most successful nations are.

I feel more Jewish than I do Iranian.

My identity comprises of more than just my faith. I am a proud Muslim, but I am also a liberal, a Briton, a Pakistani, a Londoner, a father, a product of the globalised world who speaks English, Arabic and Urdu.

I was raised Irish Catholic, but I don't consider myself Irish Catholic: I consider myself me, an American.

Nationality is a thing like a church or a secret society; it is a product of the human soul and will; it is a spiritual product.

I am neither German or French but European.

An identity to unity produces the empty gestures of cultural nationalism; assimilating unity to identity produces the kind of provincial isolation which is now call separatism ...

Let every man honor and love the land of his birth and the race from which he springs and keep their memory green. It is a pious and honorable duty .... If a man is going to be an American at all let him be so without any qualifying adjectives; and if he is going to be something else, let him drop the word American from his personal description.

The bitter and agonizing fruit from the tree of nationality…

Ethnicity and tribe begin precisely where taxes and sovereignty end.

I'm like half Brazilian and half American now.

I'm a mirror glass for the Muslims as well as the Western world, which looks at me in a slightly different way, but they are looking in the same mirror.

My identity and my background still remain with me when I go to a foreign country. I have kept my nationality.

We maintain and hold that Muslims and Hindus are two major nations by any definition or test of a nation.

We live in a society that wants to label you with a color, sexuality, religion, or ethnicity. It divides us, but it also allows us to find pride in our identity.