Gichin Funakoshi Quotes about Art

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.

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

Spirit first, technique second.

Gichin Funakoshi

Art, Technique, Firsts

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 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

Students of any art, including Karate-do must never forget the cultivation of the mind and the body.

Gichin Funakoshi

Art, Mind, Body

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

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