As you all know Jiu-Jitsu was built by real fighters. Fighters with a dream and belief in what they do. So there’s a lot of BJJ quotes made by BJJ fighters and legends of the sport of Jiu-jitsu.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Quotes by famous People:
- “My ego is my enemy and my opponent is my teacher” – Renzo Gracie
- “If you ask me what belt I am today I’ll answer you that I’m still a white belt who never gave up” – Jean Jaques Machado
- “The Art of Jiu-Jitsu is worth more in every way than all of our athletics combined” – U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt
- “You can’t lose in Jiu-Jitsu. You either win or you learn“ – Carlos Gracie, Sr.
- “In the fight, only one person can be comfortable. Your job is to transfer the comfortable from your opponent to you.” -Rickson Gracie
- “The biggest lesson I learned from jiu-jitsu was how to truly know myself” –Carlos Gracie
- “Anger brought me to jiu-jitsu, but love made me stay” – Abmar Barbosa
- “Never give up on your dreams” – Ricardo Vieira
- “The best thing about jiu jitsu is the honor it provides” – Fábio Gurgel
- “It’s as real as it can get. That has made me a better person. It’s made me a better man. It’s made me understand myself, my weaknesses, my strengths, the shit I need to work on. Jiu-jitsu has been one of the most valuable tools I’ve ever had in my life.” – Joe Rogan
- “For all the doubters all I want to say is, you should try and get to know me better. If you did you would know I never give up” – Victor “Shaolin” Ribeiro
- “To be champion all you have to do is train. But first, one must be a good person. Be a friend at the academy, learn to help. To be good at Jiu-Jitsu it’s all about believing and training, there isn’t that much else you can do.” – Rodolfo Vieira
- “If you want to be a lion you must train with lions” – Carlos Gracie, Sr.
- “Fighting is not a physical thing, it is a spiritual thing” – Rickson Gracie
- “The more I train the luckier I get” – Renzo Gracie
- “Be just with the good and tameless against the perverse” – Leonardo Vieira
- “The rule is to train, train and train some more. Train until the lamb becomes the lion” – Paulo Miyao
- “I wanted to prove that an ant can beat a cockroach” – Fernando Tererê after reaching the final of the ultra-heavyweight division at the 2004 World Jiu-Jitsu Championship (Fernando was a middleweight).
- “Here you will have a bad time all the time” – Walid Ismail
- “Jiu-jitsu is not the art of hitting, it’s the art of not getting hit” – Royce Gracie
- “Always Assume that your opponent is going to be bigger, stronger, and faster than you. So, you have to learn to rely on technique, timing, and leverage rather than brute strength” – Helio Gracie
- “The alligator (Jacaré) is very strong and can crush a few daisies (Margarida), but he can’t stop the Spring from coming” – Fernando “Margarida”
- “The winner can brag, the loser can keep quiet” – Roberto Atalla
- “Your opponent is strong, are you crazy? Strong is the smell of your bullsh**” – José Mario Sperry‘s coaching advice.
- “If it wasn’t for me, today the Gracie family would be selling banana’s on the pavement” – Carlson Gracie
- “There is an era before, and another one after Rolls Gracie“ – Royce Gracie
- “I always try to attack. While I’m on the offensive, my opponent can think of nothing but defending.” – Marcelo Garcia
- “I wasn’t a good student, and even now I never say that I am better than anybody, but I know I love Jiu-Jitsu more than anybody. I love the energy and that it gets deeper the more you study.” – Marcelo Garcia
- “When I step on the mat I know there is no other place I’d rather be.” – Marcelo Garcia
- “Sometimes I just want to be with my family and watch a movie and eat some popcorn. But when I step on the mat I know there is no other place I’d rather be.” – Marcelo Garcia
- “Why do I beat a lot of people? Because I love it so much, that’s why. Everything about Jiu-Jitsu, I love it – the school, the mat, the ring. I always believe that. Maybe I am not better than my opponent, but I know for sure I love my training more.” – Marcelo Garcia
- “The more you attack, the more your opponent will make mistakes.” – Marcelo Garcia
- “Everyone is the same for the first two minutes, everyone has a chance to win, but after that, you start to separate physically and mentally.” – Marcelo Garcia
- “I am a shark, the ground is my ocean, and most people don’t know how to swim.” – Jean Jacques Machado
- “A black belt only covers two inches of your as* – you have to cover the rest.” – Royce Gracie
- “If you think, you are late. If you are late, you use strength. If you use strength, you tire. And if you tire, you die.” – Saulo Ribeiro
- “Discipline and consistency. I owe these two factors all have attained in my life. Things have never happened overnight. Results have appeared as a consequence of decades-long toil. It is necessary to persist.” – Master Carlos Gracie Jr.
- “I drill techniques – my main techniques, my “A” move, my “A Game” sweep, the guard pass and sub I hit the most, over and over again. I’ve drilled them so many times, my body just reacts now. I can go out and let instinct take over. Most of our training is drilling, based on our individual games and what we do best. Before a big tournament, I stick to the stuff I’ve been doing, and just drill it to death….If you’re thinking about what to do next, your competitor is already moving to his next move. It’s best to just react and let your body take over.” – Keenan Cornelius
- “Dad reasoned that whether we were better than someone else should not be the focus because our position in relation to others was out of our control. We could not control another’s performance nor could we control how we would be ranked. All we could do was our best…Instead he wanted us to try very hard to give the best possible effort to become the best we could be and let the results take care of themselves.” – Coach John Wooden
- “The perfect technique is one without much effort or conscious thought applied at the right time in the right direction, with the right amount of force – a spontaneous reaction to the opportunity presented by the opponent’s movement.” – Unknown Judoka
- “The mountain-sea spirit that it is bad to repeat the same thing several times when fighting the enemy. There may be no help but to do something twice, but do not try it a third time. If you once make an attack and fail, there is little chance of success if you use the same approach again. If you attempt a technique that you have previously tried unsuccessfully and fail yet again, then you must change your attacking method. – Miyamoto Musashi “A Book of Five Rings”
- “One of the quotes that I use a lot – besides you’re only as good as the guys you sweat and bleed with – is that iron sharpens iron. So that one man sharpens another. I think that it is very true. If you are not in a training environment where you are getting smacked in the head, you are getting tapped out, you are getting challenged on a daily basis, then you are not getting any better. You’re not improving. Your workout partners are a very important piece of your progression as an athlete and the character that you are building as a person as well. Those are key components and finding that right place is a piece of it.” – Randy Couture “Wrestling For Fighting”
- “The most interesting aspect of jiu-jitsu is… of course the techniques are great…but the sensibility of the opponent, sense of touch, the weight, the momentum, the transition from one movement to another. That’s the amazing thing about it. You must allow yourself to go as on autopilot. You don’t know exactly where you’re going until the movement happened because you can not anticipate what is going to happen. You must allow yourself to be in a zero point; a neutral point. Be relaxed and connected with the variations. Flow with the go.” – Rickson Gracie – “Choke”
- “Time on the mat will eventually surpass talent and ability.” – Gracie Mag
- “…look he carries all of my weight. That’s another theory of jiu-jitsu. When I rest I should put him to work so I don’t get tired and he gets tired. He spends energy.” – Demian Maia
- “Catch him in between the movements.” – Xande Ribeiro
- “At first repetition is what counts”, says Carlos Gracie Jr. “I teach my students to repeat the moves to exhaustion, until it enters their subconscious and they, therefore, can apply them automatically, without thinking. Later on, once the combat situations have become complex I try and stimulate them to be creative.” – Master Carlos Gracie Jr.
- “It would be like asking a judo player to describe how he identifies the split second, where the opponent is in the exact right position to be thrown through the air. There are too many details for the conscious brain to observe and register so pure intuition takes over.” – Christian Graugart – The BJJ GlobeTrotter
- “If you guys attach to each other very hard, and hold each other very tight what happens is you don’t move, your opponent doesn’t move. Nothing happens in the training. That’s not Gracie Jiu-jitsu. The real Gracie Jiu-jitsu – you don’t hold tight, you kind of hold the opponent with open hands. You let him move and after that you counter him. It is 100% counterattacks. Helio Gracie was light – 140 lbs. – and was able to perform moves against much larger opponents because he brought those tricks to make the opponent commit himself to a move first so you always catch an opponent off guard. It is a very intelligent way to let somebody move first, in an empty move, you let him go first.
You no longer there to receive the move; now you are doing your own move in an empty body, an unprepared body. Thy at is the idea.” – Pedro Sauer - “Jiu-Jitsu is for the protection of the individual, the older man, the weak, the child, the lady, and the young woman from being dominated and hurt by some bum because they don’t have the physical attributes to defend themselves. Like I never had.” – Helio Gracie
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