Gichin Funakoshi Quotes About Martial Arts

Quotes about: Martial Arts

• No matter how you may excel in the art of Karate, and in your scholastic endeavors, nothing is more important than your behavior and your humanity as observed in daily life.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Humanity, Important

• The ultimate aim of Karate lies not in victory or defeat, but in the perfection of the character of its participants.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Lying, Character, Perfection

• Once a kata has been learned, it must be practised repeatedly until it can be applied in an emergency, for knowledge of just the sequence of a kata in karate is useless.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Useless, Emergencies, Martial Arts

• Only through training will a person learn his own weaknesses... He who is aware of his weaknesses will remain master of himself in any situation.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Motivational, Sports, Art

• True karate is this: that in daily life one's mind and body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility, and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Humility, Justice, Mind

• There is no place in contemporary Karate-do for different schools. Some instructors, I know, claim to have invented new and unusual kata, and so they arrogate to themselves the right to be called founders of "schools". Indeed, I have heard myself and my colleagues referred to as the Shoto-kan school, but I strongly object to this attempt at classification. My belief is that all these "schools" should be amalgamated into one so that Karate-do may pursue and orderly and useful progress into man's future.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, School, Men

• Spirit first, technique second.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Technique, Firsts

• The secret principle of martial arts is not vanquishing the attacker, but resolving to avoid an encounter before its occurrence. To become an object of an attack is an indication that there was an opening in one's guard, and the important thing is to be on guard at all times.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Secret, Important

• To practice kata is not to memorize an order. Find the katas that work for you, understand them, digest them & stick with them for life.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Order, Practice

• Seek perfection of character. Be faithful. Endeavor. Respect others. Refrain from violent behaviour.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Character, Perfection, Faithful

• There is no first strike in Karate.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Firsts, Martial Arts, Karate

  Gichin Funakoshi, Genwa Nakasone, Jotaro Takagi (2003). “空手道二十訓: The Spiritual Legacy of the Master”, p.23, Kodansha International

• Karate is a defensive art from beginning to end.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Karate, Ends

• You may train for a long time, but if you merely move your hands and feet and jump up and down like a puppet, learning karate is not very different from learning a dance. You will never have reached the heart of the matter; you will have failed to grasp the quintessence of karate-do.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Moving, Heart, Hands

• Since karate is a martial art, you must practice with the utmost seriousness from the very beginning.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Practice, Karate

  Gichin Funakoshi (1994). “Karate-dō Nyūmon: The Master Introductory Text”, p.43, Kodansha International

• In the past, it was expected that about three years were required to learn a single kata, and usually even an expert of considerable skill would only know three, or at most five, kata.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Past, Years, Skills

• It is important that karate can be practiced by the young and old, men and women alike.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Men, Important, Martial Arts

• When two tigers fight, one is certain to be maimed, and one to die.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Fighting, Two, Martial Arts

• One of the most striking features of karate is that it may be engaged in by anybody, young or old, strong or weak, male or female.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Strong, Males, Female

• Put Karate into your everyday living, that is how you will see true beauty.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Everyday, True Beauty

• Hoping to see karate included in the universal physical education taught in our public schools, I set about revising the kata so as to make them as simple as possible. Times change, the world changes, and obviously the martial arts must change too. The karate that high school students practice today is not the same karate that was practiced even as recently as ten years ago [this book was written in 1956], and it is a long way indeed from the karate I learned when I was a child in Okinawa.

  Gichin Funakoshi

  Art, Children, Book

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