Did Bruce Lee Say "Mighty is he who conquers himself"?

 

Did Bruce Lee say "Mighty is he who conquers himself"? 

Introduction

I came across this quote via the various official Bruce Lee social media sites. I decided to see if Bruce Lee actually said it. 

The Sources

Bruce Lee: The Tao of Gung Fu, Bruce Lee and John Little, 1997

I checked the Bruce Lee Library and other sources and found it in volume 2, Bruce Lee: The Tao of Gung Fu: A Study in the Way of Chinese Martial Art. It reads:

"To see oneself is to be clear of right. Mighty is he who conquers himself."

I suspected that it was a copy from somewhere else, so I searched for the origin.

The Origin

The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham, 1925

It was fairly easy to find the source for the quote. I first located it in a March 2015 blog post by Stephen N. Greenleaf titled The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham. He offers the following excerpt from the book The Painted Veil:

"H who strives after tenderness can become even as a little child. Gentleness brings victory to him who attacks and safety to him who defends. Mighty is he who conquers himself." (emphasis added)

To confirm the quote, I found it in an online copy of the book as well:

The Painted Veil, W. Somerset Maugham, 1925

How Did Bruce Lee Find It?

Tak Sun School, Hong Kong, Wikimedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tak_Sun_School_in_Hong_Kong.JPG

Mr. Greenleaf says the following about the author of the book, British writer W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965), and the work itself:

"Maugham began his writing career before the advent of the First World War and published his most acclaimed work, Of Human Bondage, in 1915. He continued publish well past the Second World War. Thus, The Painted Veil is a mid-career work for him... 

In this work, set in Hong Kong and the Chinese interior, China becomes more of a stage prop than I would hope or expect, at least if written today. No Chinese characters receive any depth of portraiture. 

But since the story centers on Kitty and placement of her in the Chinese interior serves to isolate and alienate her from the much more Anglicized setting of Hong Kong." (emphasis added)

As the book was published 15 years before Mr. Lee was born (in 1940), it was available for reading when he was a student. Yet how could Bruce Lee, raised in Hong Kong, have read it? And why?

This is where the excellent biography of Mr. Lee by Matthew Polly comes into play. Mr. Lee was a member of one of the wealthiest families in Hong Kong, through his mother's side. Mr. Polly wrote the following on the education Mr. Lee enjoyed:

"Bruce’s mother, Grace, was a devout Catholic and personal friends with many European and American nuns and priests. Wanting her children to have the best possible education, she enrolled them in the finest Catholic schools in the British colony. 'To send her children to whichever parochial school was as easy as placing a phone call for her,' says [Bruce's brother Robert.] 

For their elementary school education, Grace sent her daughters to St. Mary’s School run by European nuns and her sons to Tak Sun, an all-boys parochial school...

Following in the footsteps of his older brother, ten-year-old Bruce entered La Salle in September 1951 as a fifth-grader. [It] was one of the most prestigious secondary schools in Hong Kong. Most of its students were upper- and middle-class Chinese and Eurasians, although there were a number of scholarship students. Its great advantage was the entire curriculum was taught in English, producing bilingual graduates...

Without his elite education at La Salle, Bruce Lee would never have made it in Hollywood, where the ability to speak English is a prerequisite, especially for Asian actors."

English was one of the few subjects in which Bruce excelled." (emphasis added)

I suggest that The Painted Veil, a book in English, written by a Briton, set in Hong Kong and China, was just the sort of book that would be assigned to students at elite English-language schools in Hong Kong. Mr. Lee undoubtedly read it and made a note of the phrase "Mighty is he who conquers himself."

Conclusion

The quote "Mighty is he who conquers himself." does appear in works containing Bruce Lee's writings, but it should be attributed to British author W. Somerset Maugham, from his 1925 book The Painted Veil. Mr. Lee likely read the book as an assignment in his elite English-speaking private schools in Hong Kong.

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