Photo of J. Krishnamurti

15 Quotes on Achievement by Krishnamurti

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A businessman is concentrated because he wants to amass wealth or power. When another concentrates in meditation, he also is after achievement and reward.

Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living 2

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Suppression and conformity are not the steps that lead to freedom. The first step towards freedom is the understanding of bondage. Discipline does shape behaviour and mould thought to the desired pattern, but without understanding desire, mere control or discipline perverts thought; whereas when there is an awareness of the ways of desire, that awareness brings clarity and order. After all, concentration is the way of desire. A man of business is concentrated because he wants to amass wealth or power, and when another concentrates in meditation, he also is after achievement, reward. Both are pursuing success, which yields self-confidence and the feeling of being secure.

Humility is not conscious clearing of the known; that is the vanity of achievement. Humility is complete not-knowing, which is dying.

Krishnamurti’s Notebook

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It is strange that one can never say, ‘I don’t know.’ To say it and really feel it, there must be humility. But one never admits to the fact of not knowing; it is vanity that fills the mind with knowledge. Vanity is a strange disease, ever hopeful and ever dejected. But to admit to not knowing is to stop the mechanical process of knowing. There are several ways of saying, ‘I don’t know’ – pretence and all its subtle and underhand methods, to impress, to gain importance and so on. There is the ‘I don’t know’ that is really marking time to find out, and the ‘I don’t know’ that is not searching out to know. The former state never learns; it only gathers. The latter is always in a state of learning, without ever accumulating. There must be freedom to learn, and so the mind can remain young and innocent. Accumulating makes the mind decay, grow old and wither. Innocency is not the lack of experience but to be free of experience; this freedom is to die to every experience and not let it take root in the soil of the enriching brain. Life is not without experience, but life is not when the soil is full of roots. Humility is not conscious clearing of the known; that is the vanity of achievement. Humility is complete not-knowing, which is dying. Fear of death is only in knowing, not in not knowing. There is no fear of the unknown, only in the changing of the known and the ending of the known.

In meditation there is absolutely no effort, no achievement, no thinking. The brain is quiet, not made quiet by will, by intention, by conclusion; it is quiet.

Krishnamurti, The Future Is Now

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Is there a meditation which has nothing to do with effort at all? I say there is. You don’t have to accept it; he may be talking nonsense, but he sees logically that the ordinary meditation is self-hypnosis, deceiving oneself. When you stop deceiving, stop the mechanical process, is there a different kind of meditation? I say yes. You can’t get at it through effort, through giving all your energy to it. It is something that has to be absolutely silent. Begin very humbly – very, very humbly, and therefore very gently, and therefore, no pushing, no driving, no saying, ‘I must do this.’ Meditation requires a tremendous sense not only of aloneness, but a sense of… I won’t describe it because then you’ll go off into the description. The description is not the real. The description of the moon is not the moon; a painting of the Himalayas is not the Himalayas. So, I’ll stop describing. It’s for you to play with it, but not going your own way with your peculiar achievements through meditation, reward and all the rest of it. In meditation there is absolutely no effort, no achievement, no thinking. The brain is quiet, not made quiet by will, by intention, by conclusion; it is quiet. And being quiet, it has infinite space.

We use time as a means of achievement, tangible or psychological.

Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living 1

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Can one think of time at all except in the chronological sense? We can use time as a means, but in itself it has little meaning. Time as an abstraction is a mere speculation, and all speculation is vain. We use time as a means of achievement, tangible or psychological. Time is needed to go to the station, but most of us use time as a means to a psychological end, and the ends are many. We are aware of time when there is an impediment to our achievement, or when there is the interval of becoming successful. Time is the space between ‘what is’ and what might, should, or will be. The beginning going towards the end is time.

Thought cannot know the timeless; it is not a further acquisition, a further achievement; there is no going towards it. It is a state of being in which thought, time, is not.

Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living 1

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Recognition implies the experiencer, and the experiencer is always of time. To recognise something, thought must have experienced it; and if it has experienced it, then it is the known. The known is not the timeless. The known is always within the net of time. Thought cannot know the timeless; it is not a further acquisition, a further achievement; there is no going towards it. It is a state of being in which thought, time, is not.

Our imagination, our conditioning, our sense of achievement does not allow that which is being said to penetrate.

Krishnamurti, Life Ahead

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Most of us do not really listen. We are distracted by external noises, or we have some prejudice, some bias which gives a twist to the mind, and this prevents us from really listening to what is being said. This is especially so with older people because they have a long series of achievements and failures behind them; they are somebodies or nobodies in the world, and it is very difficult to penetrate the layers of their formulations, their preconceptions. Their imagination, their conditioning, their sense of achievement will not allow that which is being said to penetrate. But if we know how to listen to what is being said, if we can listen to it without any barrier, without any interpretation, just listen as we would to the song of a bird in the morning, then listening is an extraordinary thing, especially when something true is being said. We may not like it, we may instinctively resist it, but if we can really listen, we will see the truth of it. So real listening unburdens the mind, it clears away the dross of many years of failure, of success, of longing.

The ‘I’ comes into being through the sense of achievement in various forms.

Krishnamurti, Life Ahead

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The ‘I’ is very subtle. It wants one thing this year and another thing next year; and when that turns out to be painful, it then wants something else. As long as the centre of the ‘I’ exists, whether one is proud or so-called humble is of very little significance. They are only different coats to put on. When a particular coat appeals to me, I put it on; and next year, according to my fancies, my desires, I put on another coat. Understand how the ‘I’ comes into being. The ‘I’ comes into being through the sense of achievement in various forms. This does not mean that you must not act, but the feeling that you are acting, that you are achieving, that you must be without pride, has to be understood. You have to understand the structure of the ‘I’. You have to be aware of your own thinking; you have to observe how you treat others, your mother and father; you have to be conscious of how you regard those who are above you and those who are below you, those whom you respect and those whom you despise. All this reveals the ways of the ‘I’. Through understanding the ways of the ‘I’, there is freedom from the ‘I’.

It is still worldliness when you seek achievement, whether it be fame or the achievement of what one may call the ideal or God.

Krishnamurti, The Only Revolution

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Unworldliness is not the loincloth or one meal a day or repeating some meaningless though stimulating mantra or phrase. It is worldliness when you give up the world and are inwardly part of that world of envy, greed, fear, of accepting authority and the division between the one who knows and the one who doesn’t know. It is still worldliness when you seek achievement, whether it be fame or the achievement of what one may call the ideal, or God, or what you will. It is the accepted tradition of the culture that is essentially worldly, and withdrawing into a mountain far from man does not absolve this worldliness. Reality, under no circumstances, lies in that direction.

Meditation has no beginning and no end. There is no achievement and no failure, no gathering and no renunciation; it is a movement without finality and so beyond and above time and space.

Krishnamurti’s Notebook

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Meditation has no beginning and no end. There is no achievement and no failure, no gathering and no renunciation; it is a movement without finality and so beyond and above time and space. The experiencing of it is the denying of it, for the experiencer is bound to time and space, memory and recognition. The foundation for true meditation is that passive awareness which is the total freedom from authority and ambition, envy and fear. Meditation has no meaning, no significance whatsoever without this freedom and without self-knowing. As long as there is choice, there’s no self-knowing. Choice implies conflict, which prevents the understanding of ‘what is’. Wandering off into fancy, into romantic beliefs is not meditation; the brain must strip itself of every myth, illusion and security and face the reality of their falseness. There is no distraction; everything is in the movement of meditation. The flower is the form, the scent, the colour, and is beauty is the whole of it. Tear it to pieces, actually or verbally, and there is no flower, only a remembrance of what was, which is never the flower. Meditation is the whole flower in its beauty, withering and living.

Education must be devoid of the fears that arise from the craving for success and achievement.

Krishnamurti, Education and the Significance of Life

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Dedication to the right kind of education must be wholly voluntary. It should not be the result of any kind of persuasion, or of any hope of personal gain, and it must be devoid of the fears that arise from the craving for success and achievement. The identification of oneself with the success or failure of a school is still within the field of personal motive. If to teach is one’s vocation, if one looks upon the right kind of education as a vital need for the individual, then one will not allow oneself to be hindered or in any way sidetracked either by one’s own ambitions or by those of another; one will find time and opportunity for this work, and will set about it without seeking reward, honour or fame. Then all other things – family, personal security, comfort – become of secondary importance.

There is no such thing as an ideal because that is merely an achievement. Beauty is not an achievement; it is reality – now, not tomorrow.

Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom

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Since our hearts have withered, God has become awfully important. That is, you want to know God because you have lost the song in your heart. So you pursue the singer and ask him whether he can teach you how to sing. He can teach you the technique, but the technique will not lead you to creation. You cannot be a musician by merely knowing how to sing. You may know all the steps of a dance, but if you have not creation in your heart, you are only functioning as a machine. You cannot love if your aim is merely to achieve a result. There is no such thing as an ideal because that is merely an achievement. Beauty is not an achievement; it is reality – now, not tomorrow. If there is love, you will understand the unknown, you will know what God is, and nobody need tell you. And that is the beauty of love. It is eternity in itself. Because there is no love, we want someone, or God, to give it to us. If we really loved, do you know what a different world this would be? We would be really happy people. We would be happy, and therefore things, people and ideals would not dominate our lives. They are all secondary things. Because we do not love and because we are not happy, we invest in things, thinking they will give us happiness, and one of the things in which we invest is God.

The mind must voluntarily lose all accumulative impulse, the storing up of experience as a means to further experience and achievement.

Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living 1

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In sleep there is found an answer to our problems. When the conscious mind is quiet, it is capable of receiving an answer – which is a simple affair. But what is far more significant and important than all this is the renewal which is not a cultivation. One can deliberately cultivate a gift, a capacity, or develop a technique, a pattern of action and behaviour; but this is not renewal. Cultivation is not creation. This creative renewal does not take place if there is any kind of effort on the part of a becomer. The mind must voluntarily lose all accumulative impulse, the storing up of experience as a means to further experience and achievement. It is the accumulative, self-protective urge that breeds the curve of time and prevents creative renewal.

Any achievement,s  whether individual or collective, becomes a means to power. Success in this world, and the power that self-control and self-denial bring, are to be avoided, for both distort understanding.

Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living 1

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To be powerful, to be successful is to be slavish, which is the denial of virtue. Virtue gives freedom, but it is not a thing to be gained. Any achievement, whether individual or collective, becomes a means to power. Success in this world, and the power that self-control and self-denial bring, are to be avoided, for both distort understanding. It is the desire for success that prevents humility, and without humility how can there be understanding? The man of success is hardened, self-enclosed; he is burdened with his own importance, with his responsibilities, achievements and memories. There must be freedom from self-assumed responsibilities and from the burden of achievement, for that which is weighed down cannot be swift, and to understand requires a swift and pliable mind. Mercy is denied to the successful, for they are incapable of knowing the very beauty of life, which is love.

The mind is ever seeking a result, a way to some achievement. Mind is an instrument that has been put together; it is the fabric of time, and it can only think in terms of result, of achievement, of something to be gained or avoided.

Krishnamurti, Commentaries on Living 2

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Effort is desire. One desire can be overcome by a greater desire, and that desire by still another, and so on endlessly. Desire breeds deception, illusion, contradiction, and the visions of hope. The all-conquering desire for the ultimate, or the will to reach that which is nameless, is still the way of consciousness, of the experiencer of good and bad, the experiencer who is waiting, watching, hoping. Consciousness is not of one particular level, it is the totality of our being. The mind is ever seeking a result, a way to some achievement. Mind is an instrument that has been put together; it is the fabric of time, and it can only think in terms of result, of achievement, of something to be gained or avoided.

We are trained from childhood to acquire and achieve. The brain creates and demands this pattern of achievement in order to have physical security, but psychological security is not within the field of achievement.

Krishnamurti, Freedom From the Known

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One of the greatest stumbling blocks in life is this constant struggle to reach, to achieve, to acquire. We are trained from childhood to acquire and achieve. The brain creates and demands this pattern of achievement in order to have physical security, but psychological security is not within the field of achievement. We demand security in all our relationships, attitudes and activities, but there is actually no such thing as security. To find out for yourself that there is no form of security in any relationship – to realise that psychologically there is nothing permanent – gives a totally different approach to life. It is essential, of course, to have outward security – shelter, clothing, food – but that outward security is destroyed by the demand for psychological security.

These quotes only touch on the many subjects Krishnamurti inquired into during his lifetime. His timeless and universal teachings can be explored using the Index of Topics where you will find texts, audio and video related on many themes. Another option is to browse our selection of curated articles or more short quotes. Krishnamurti’s reply when asked what lies at the heart of his teachings can be found here. Many Krishnamurti books are available, a selection of which can be explored here. To find out more about Krishnamurti’s life, please see our introduction and the biography. We also host a weekly podcast, and offer free downloads. Please visit our YouTube channel for hundreds of specially selected shorter clips. Below, you can learn more about Krishnamurti and our charity which he founded in 1968.

Krishnamurti outdoors smiling

Who Was Krishnamurti?

J. Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is widely regarded as one of the greatest thinkers and religious teachers of all time. He spoke throughout the world to large audiences and to individuals, including writers, scientists, philosophers and educators, about the need for a radical change in mankind. Referring to himself, Krishnamurti said:

He is acting as a mirror for you to look into. That mirror is not an authority. It has no authority, it’s just a mirror. And when you see it clearly, understand what you see in that mirror, then throw it away, break it up.

Krishnamurti was concerned with all humanity and held no nationality or belief and belonged to no particular group or culture. In the latter part of his life, along with continuing to give public talks, he travelled mainly between the schools he had founded in India, Britain and the United States, which educate for the total understanding of man and the art of living. He stressed that only this profound understanding can create a new generation that will live in peace.

Krishnamurti reminded his listeners again and again that we are all human beings first and not Hindus, Muslims or Christians, that we are like the rest of humanity and are not different from one another. He asked that we tread lightly on this earth without destroying ourselves or the environment. He communicated to his listeners a deep sense of respect for nature. His teachings transcend man-made belief systems, nationalistic sentiment and sectarianism. At the same time, they give new meaning and direction to mankind’s search for truth. His teaching is timeless, universal and increasingly relevant to the modern age.

I am nobody. It is as simple as that. I am nobody. But what is important is who you are, what you are.

Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti spoke not as a guru but as a friend. His talks and discussions are based not on tradition-based knowledge but on his own insights into the human mind and his vision of the sacred, so he always communicated a sense of freshness and directness, although the essence of his message remained unchanged over the years. When Krishnamurti addressed large audiences, people felt that he was talking to each of them personally, addressing their own particular problem. In his private interviews, he was a compassionate teacher, listening attentively to those who came to him in sorrow, and encouraging them to heal themselves through their own understanding. Religious scholars found that his words threw new light on traditional concepts. Krishnamurti took on the challenge of modern scientists and psychologists and went with them step by step, discussing their theories and sometimes enabling them to discern the limitations of their theories.

Krishnamurti left a large body of literature in the form of public talks, writings, discussions with teachers and students, scientists, psychologists and religious figures, conversations with individuals, television and radio interviews, and letters. Many of these have been published as books, in over 60 languages, along with hundreds of audio and video recordings.

Three-quarters portrait photo of Krishnamurti

The Krishnamurti Foundation

Established in 1968 as a registered charity, and located at The Krishnamurti Centre, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust exists to preserve and make available Krishnamurti’s teachings.

The Foundation serves a global audience by providing worldwide free access to Krishnamurti videos, audio and texts to those who may be interested in pursuing an understanding of Krishnamurti’s work in their own lives.

In describing his intentions for the Foundations, Krishnamurti said: 

The Foundations will see to it that these teachings are kept whole, are not distorted, are not made corrupt.

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