The KIA Way
- Traditional Values
- Innovative Ideas
- Quality Without Compromise
- Substance Before Symbol
Principles of the Karate Institute of America
- Your life, your responsibility.
- Preparation is the key to success.
- The road to success is paved with failure.
- There can be no excellence without effort.
- Balance is primary.
- Concentration is the first key.
- Character must precede prowess.
- Grown ups—own up.
- Strength is the ability to endure.
- Arrogance is the highest form of weakness;
- Humility is the highest form of strength.
- Doing it right is the right thing to do.
- True power flows not shows.
- Everything returns to center.
- A Black Belt without humility is like a well without water.
- Concentration coalesces.
- Not to but through.
- Peace at any price is not peace, it is slavery.
- The essential thing is not excessive speed, it is perfect speed.
- The way out is in.
- Maximize the minimum.
- Rank does not make the man. The man makes the rank.
- Regarding rank, the KIA viewpoint is that all souls are the same.
- We compete to test our skill, not expand our ego.
- The gift of competition is not truth, it is experience.
- No integrity, no substance.
- Control is the mark of a master.
- Character is more important than victory.
- It is nothing to begin, it is everything to finish.
- Need before greed.
- Integrity before wealth.
- Principle before pleasure.
- To become everything you first must become nothing.
- Progress is based on performance, not time in grade or money paid.
- Diamonds are made under extreme heat and pressure over an extended period of time; not by a mere and casual blowing of an intermittent wind.