Bruce Lee was a man seemingly contradicting himself. On the one hand, he is known for remarks or quotes as those in the title, and actually named his personal art 'Jeet Kune Do' and if you know the translation / meaning it would appear to seeminly solidify it into a 'style' on the otherhand, he advocated to go 'beyond style', or beyond system.
For us living in the 2020's, reading Bruce Lee's notes and articles about him, it is often a little difficult to understand, particularly if you do not know in what phase of his personal development he made such statements or notes, and if they were for himself or a certain audience. All in all it hasn't helped in making things easy to understand. If you read earlier notes or annecdotes by others who knew him, you'd be forgiven to think that Bruce was on a path to gather the best of many styles, and put them together into one coherent system, but he soon discovered that various systems varied in their approach, and they just didn't work well (together), and he then came to the realisation that he approached it all wrong. Instead of looking from outside in, he decided to look inside out. In other words, rather than looking at the branches (the various martial arts systems/styles out there), he looked at the root of all human combat, which is the way a human being moves-functions. No matter what art you take, there's a human at the core(root)! This is where his statement 'it is futile to look at all the decorative flowers and branches, if you understand the root, you understand all it's blossoming', originates.
Yes, he had 3 arts at the root of his development, but he had found that these already had a fair degree of scientific approach behind them, he only needed to refine and adapt them to his needs. These were chiefly Ving Tsun, Boxing and Fencing, and by doing so, they no longer were 'fencing (he used no bladed weapons), boxing (he didn't use gloves and his footwork resembled more that of a fencer), and the forms in ving tsun were no longer important, rather he used the theories of centreline, 4 corners and others etc to develop his strategies. The useful elements of each of these 3 arts were modified to a degree to work seemlessly together, and elements of grappling arts were studied to cover the ground fighting aspect, but all whilst being very consious not to move from style to style, depending on the situation, but rather which action / human movement is the most efficient/direct/effective at any given moment. He didn't throw a boxing punch, followed by a wingchun trap and a kick, he 'just punched', 'kicked' , 'grabbed', 'pulled', 'threw' as it came naturally, not labelling things any longer. The movements were purely based on efficiency as performed by the human body, and as such he transcended systems/styles. This is also where the statement comes from that Jeet Kune Do, trancends all styles.
This is what the true art of Jeet Kune Do is all about. It can still be called a style, but I hope that you understand that this is not a 'style' in the traditional sense, but the rather the style of human combative movement.
The label Jeet Kune Do serves this purpose to identify we're studying/practicing Bruce Lee's teachings, and not anyone elses.
Walk On!
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