Lee says these exact words on camera on the 9 December 1971 edition of The Pierre Berton Show, filmed in Hong Kong — his only English-language television interview. He is reciting, at Berton’s prompting, dialogue he had already delivered as the character Li Tsung in the Longstreet episode “The Way of the Intercepting Fist” (ABC, 16 September 1971), an episode credited to screenwriter Stirling Silliphant.
“Be water, my friend” Bruce Lee, interviewed by Pierre Berton, The Pierre Berton Show, edition of 9 December 1971, filmed in Hong Kong — reciting dialogue written for him as Li Tsung in Longstreet, "The Way of the Intercepting Fist" (ABC, 16 September 1971), credited to Stirling Silliphant. Via Quotle.info. · Verbatim: “Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool
In context
Evoking the world of Bruce Lee — Hong Kong-American martial artist, actor & filmmaker. Theme: "Be water, my friend". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Be water, my friend". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Spoken on
The Pierre Berton Show
Edition
9 December 1971, filmed in Hong Kong — Lee’s only English-language TV interview
First written for
Longstreet, “The Way of the Intercepting Fist”
That episode
ABC, 16 September 1971 — written by Stirling Silliphant; Lee as Li Tsung
Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
The Pierre Berton Show, 9 Dec 1971
Lee did not volunteer this. Berton had just asked him, “Can you remember the lines Stirling Silliphant wrote for you? The key lines” — and Lee prefaced the passage by explaining he was talking to Longstreet, played by James Franciscus. The version heard in the Longstreet episode itself is shorter and differently worded — it drops the bottle clause altogether, and its water can “flow, or creep or drip or crash.” The episode monologue, quoted in full ↗
16 September 1971 — ABC broadcasts Longstreet: “The Way of the Intercepting Fist,” written by Stirling Silliphant, with Bruce Lee as the martial-arts teacher Li Tsung. Wikipedia’s episode listing ↗ This is where the water passage is first heard: a review of the episode quotes Li Tsung’s monologue in full, closing on “Be water, my friend.” Classic Film & TV Café’s episode review ↗
9 December 1971 — the edition of The Pierre Berton Show filmed in Hong Kong, and what remains Lee’s only English-speaking television interview. Wikipedia: Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview ↗
In that interview Berton asks Lee to recall “the lines Stirling Silliphant wrote for you”; Lee answers with the water passage and closes it “Be water, my friend.” Transcript of the exchange ↗
Both documented sources are 1971 broadcasts — the ABC Longstreet episode of 16 September and the Berton interview of 9 December — so this wording sits well inside US copyright, and the screenplay credit on the episode belongs to Stirling Silliphant. Quotle.info reproduces the passage as short quotation for identification and provenance, not under any licence.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What people get wrong
The attribution to Bruce Lee is sound — he says the words on camera, on a dated and surviving tape. What travels alongside the quote is usually wrong in two smaller, more interesting ways.
✕
AuthorshipStirling Silliphant the writer nobody names
The passage was first heard not as a Bruce Lee statement but as dialogue for his character Li Tsung, in an episode credited to screenwriter Stirling Silliphant. Lee appeared in four Longstreet episodes, and Wikipedia’s episode table credits only this one — “The Way of the Intercepting Fist,” the one carrying the water passage — to Silliphant; the other three went to other writers. The episode table ↗ A South China Morning Post feature is built entirely on this point, headlined around how the ‘be water’ quote “from fictional US TV series came to be attributed to him.” SCMP ↗
✕
AuthorshipBruce Lee himself contested, not settled
Sources disagree about how much of the passage Lee put down. Wikiquote’s note says he “was reciting lines he wrote for his short lived role on the TV series Longstreet”; Classic Film & TV Café’s review of the episode says instead that Lee “worked on the script with Silliphant.” On camera, Berton framed them as Silliphant’s lines and Lee did not correct him. Wikiquote ↗The episode review ↗
~
Wording“Be like water, my friend” drifted variant
What Lee says in the interview is “Be water, my friend” — but the softened “Be like water, my friend” circulates just as widely, including as the standing epigraph on a long-running fan page devoted to this very interview. The two are frequently swapped mid-sentence. An example of the variant ↗
✓Lee really did say it, on 9 December 1971 — but he said it as a recitation, prompted by Berton asking him to recall “the lines Stirling Silliphant wrote for you.” Transcript of the exchange ↗
Context
Why it mattered
Lee built Jeet Kune Do against the grain of the traditional schools: not a style to be learned but, as Wikipedia puts it, a principle of “the style of no style.” The water metaphor is that argument compressed into something a television audience could hold in one hand. A cup, a bottle, a teapot — nothing about form, everything about refusing to be committed to one.
What makes the line unusual among famous quotations is that it was engineered for broadcast and then spoken as philosophy by the man who had performed it. Silliphant, an Oscar-winning screenwriter, was also Lee’s student — and by the episode review’s account Lee “worked on the script with Silliphant.” The dialogue credited to Silliphant was close enough to what Lee actually taught that Lee could recite it in an interview as a statement of his own philosophy, which is exactly what he did three months after the episode aired.
Now water can flow, or it can crash.
Read the full story
The underlying idea was Lee’s long before it was a script. His private writings, collected in Bruce Lee: Artist of Life, describe an epiphany while sailing alone in a junk after a frustrating stretch of training — striking the water and finding it unhurt, and asking whether water was not the very essence of gung fu. The Marginalian on Lee’s water writings ↗
The phrase had a second life half a century on, as a slogan for decentralised, fast-dispersing street protest — which is where a great many people first encountered it, and part of why its 1971 television origin is so often missed.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1940–1973 · Hong Kong-American martial artist, actor & filmmaker
Born in San Francisco in 1940 and raised in Hong Kong, Bruce Lee was a martial artist, actor and filmmaker who died in 1973 at thirty-two. He built Jeet Kune Do — “the way of the intercepting fist” — around the idea that a fixed style is a cage, a conviction Wikipedia summarises as his principle of “the style of no style.” In 1971 he appeared in four episodes of the American series Longstreet; the first of them, “The Way of the Intercepting Fist,” was credited to his own student, the Oscar-winning screenwriter Stirling Silliphant — the collaboration that put the water metaphor on television. The episode table ↗
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this page
Bruce Lee, interview by Pierre Berton, The Pierre Berton Show, edition of 9 December 1971, filmed in Hong Kong; the recording was rediscovered and aired, Wikipedia records, on 2 November 1994 as Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview. The same passage was written for Lee as the character Li Tsung in Longstreet, “The Way of the Intercepting Fist,” written by Stirling Silliphant (ABC, 16 September 1971).
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Be water, my friend’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/be-water-my-friend/