Top 90 Chris Matakas Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We have this sort of false self we portray over the internet. It’s a facade of highlights we believe our peers will deem noteworthy.”

— Chris Matakas

2. “You have become more and therefore expect more, but never become too purpose-driven to step back and realize just how far you have progressed.”

— Chris Matakas

3. “The highest aim was never to master Jiu Jitsu; it was to master myself.”

— Chris Matakas

4. “There is an opportunity cost for everything we do. This is why we must have the awareness to ensure that what we are pursuing is really what we value, because the pursuit leaves countless lost opportunities in its wake. We choose one experience at the sacrifice of all other experiences.”

— Chris Matakas

5. “Imagine a true master of the art, someone with complete skill in every aspect of Jiu Jitsu. This master would not force anything. He would simply allow the roll to take whatever form it does, and in every position would act in the most efficient way based off what the circumstance dictates, and not what he himself prefers.”

— Chris Matakas

6. “Wearing a black belt does not make you a super hero, and wearing a white belt does not mean you have little to offer as a person. It is what we do in the belts we wear, and not the belts themselves that matter.”

— Chris Matakas

7. “Make no mistake, you earn a white belt. The belt is a physical representation of a commitment to the beginner’s mind. It is a vulnerability and a willingness to learn that shines through.”

— Chris Matakas

8. “You are never as good as you think you are, and you are never as bad as you believe yourself to be.”

— Chris Matakas

9. “It was my letting go that gave me a better hold.”

— Chris Matakas

10. “The best yardstick for our progress is not other people, but ourselves. Am I better than I was yesterday? This is the only question worth asking. As long as you go to bed at night a better practitioner than the one who woke up that morning, you have succeeded. Your worth should have nothing to do with how your progress stacks up relative to another.”

— Chris Matakas

11. “If Jiu Jitsu does not make you a better father, son, mother, daughter, wife or husband, you are missing the point. If Jiu Jitsu does not leave you viewing strangers in a kinder light, you are missing the point. If you are not better equipped to deal with the vicissitudes of life due to your training, then you are not really training.”

— Chris Matakas

12. “Today’s world is flooded with participation trophies. In an attempt to promote equality we have robbed our youth of the most growth-inducing aspect of competition, failing. If you want to be resurrected, you have to first be crucified. Everybody wants to be reborn, but no one is willing to die. Losing, in the context of whatever arena it may be, is a microcosmic death. When we learn from our failures and grow because of them, we are reborn.”

— Chris Matakas

13. “Jiu Jitsu is a vehicle for self-discovery and growth. It reminds me of my ego, of my insecurities, and of my shortcomings.”

— Chris Matakas

14. “After I received my blue belt, I soon recognized that the belts were simply an external representation of an inner experience, and that they mattered little compared to the person I was becoming.”

— Chris Matakas

15. “If you are fortunate enough to have a particular activity with which you find greatest joy and technical success, it is your responsibility as a growing human being to continue that study. Whatever your endeavor, if you can expand upon the knowledge in your strongest subject, that new found understanding of all things will trickle down to every other area of your life.”

— Chris Matakas

16. “As a culture we tend to feel great pride towards our strengths, and shame for our weaknesses. It is time we take notice that these are two pieces of the same whole.”

— Chris Matakas

17. “Jiu Jitsu is the vehicle. Not the road.”

— Chris Matakas

18. “The rare opportunity to exist, no matter how brief, is worth the pain left in the wake of its disappearance.”

— Chris Matakas

19. “Nothing feels dirtier than living a life that is not your own. No amount of money is worth my soul. I would rather be homeless and go out in a blaze of glory than subject myself to a slow and steady death of apathy and government by my environment.”

— Chris Matakas

20. “There is no higher calling than service to your fellow man, and to do so through your own personal mastery of a craft is a gift enjoyed by few. Cultivate this gift, and give it away.”

— Chris Matakas

21. “It is in community where we find our very selves.”

— Chris Matakas

22. “Jiu Jitsu is meant to serve us, not the other way around. It is meant to make you more of whatever it is you already are. It is meant to separate the wheat from the chaff. It is meant to bring to conscious attention all that once went unseen. It is meant to make you more loving. It is meant to make you more wise, but less certain. It is meant to make us humble, yet supremely confident. It is meant to remind us of our frailty while simultaneously making us feel invincible.”

— Chris Matakas

23. “Being part of the whole, as I grow so does that which contains me.”

— Chris Matakas

24. “Deep down I believe each of us is a well-spring of understanding and wisdom, but we simply never allow the space or time for this understanding to rise to the level of conscious thought.”

— Chris Matakas

25. “We seek to understand Jiu Jitsu as a vehicle to understand ourselves. We have different explicit goals, from getting in shape, learning self-defense or competition, but tacitly we all seek mastery of ourselves.”

— Chris Matakas

26. “Anyone can be tough for a season. It takes a special kind of human to rise to life’s challenges for a lifetime.”

— Chris Matakas

27. “Life is so unlikely, so rare and beautiful an opportunity it is to live, we must be on constant guard to ensure that our actions are worthy of the life it takes to perform them.”

— Chris Matakas

28. “Jiu Jitsu is a baptism by combat, and serves a purpose in the inner life of the individual that has always existed, but our modern culture fails to acknowledge.”

— Chris Matakas

29. “If you can wrestle but not play Jiu Jitsu, or you can play Jiu Jitsu but not wrestle, you are not a complete grappler and lack the sufficient skills to safely subdue an opponent.”

— Chris Matakas

30. “It is important to realize that we so often define ourselves by what is in opposition to ourselves.”

— Chris Matakas

31. “A life of joy awaits the man who sits alone quietly in a room and determines what he himself believes rather than simply adopting the values of another.”

— Chris Matakas

32. “I have never been as alive or awake as I have been through Jiu Jitsu.”

— Chris Matakas

33. “The only permanent aspect of creation is constant impermanence.”

— Chris Matakas

34. “In the modern world we are surrounded by so much abundance that we cannot see it.”

— Chris Matakas

35. “This is what Jiu Jitsu gives us, and is what so often remains ineffable. Jiu Jitsu frees us and allows us to be what we have always been, but simply never had the medium to express. Jiu Jitsu is the vehicle. Not the Road.”

— Chris Matakas

36. “Your greatest attribute, that which allows you to accomplish most in life and the most treasured aspect of your being will often be the source of your greatest suffering.”

— Chris Matakas

37. “The point of meditating is not to learn to sit quietly in a room. The point is to live that way in the world.”

— Chris Matakas

38. “We are only different because there exists something to be different from, and it is this difference that bonds us.”

— Chris Matakas

39. “We are just too busy trying to appear smart to realize how intelligent we actually are.”

— Chris Matakas

40. “We rise to meet each day because there will come a time when the day will rise without us.”

— Chris Matakas

41. “If we do not master ourselves, we will be a slave to ourselves.”

— Chris Matakas

42. “An intelligent consistency is the foundation of genius.”

— Chris Matakas

43. “We are free to live the life we have imagined, not the life imagined for us.”

— Chris Matakas

44. “We are very much at the mercy of circumstance, but it is how you choose to respond to circumstance that determines the quality of your life.”

— Chris Matakas

45. “This is what it means to be mindful. To watch the thoughts as they come and go without judgment while completely accepting what arises in the present moment.”

— Chris Matakas

46. “Jiu Jitsu gives each of us something that no other sport can. We have the opportunity to become truly great regardless of what circumstance fate has handed us. We have complete freedom and responsibility to achieve whatever level of mastery we wish.”

— Chris Matakas

47. “In Jiu Jitsu, we often fall into the trap of simply trying a technique “harder,” rather than recognizing that it is a poorly chosen tool for the task at hand.”

— Chris Matakas

48. “The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing.”

— Chris Matakas

49. “When you realize you are no longer made of glass, you lose the desire to demonstrate that fragility in others.”

— Chris Matakas

50. “Everything is relative, including relativity.”

— Chris Matakas