1,186 Action Quotes

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.

Love has a hem to her garment that reaches to the very dust. It sweeps the stains from the streets and lanes, and because it can, it must.

When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

Just as rust, which arose from the iron itself, wears out the iron, likewise, performing an action without examination would destroy us by projecting us into a negative state of existence.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.

Dreams grow holy put in action; work grows fair through starry dreaming, But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.

There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.

Does the end justify the means? That is possible. But what will justify the end? To that question, which historical thought leaves pending, rebellion replies: the means.

If you keep on excusing, you eventually give your blessing to the slave camp, to cowardly force, to organized executioners, to the cynicism of great political monsters; you finally hand over your brothers.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

There always comes a time when one must choose between contemplation and action. This is called becoming a man.

The ethic of Reverence for Life prompts us to keep each other alert to what troubles us and to speak and act dauntlessly together in discharging the responsibility that we feel. It keeps us watching together for opportunities to bring some sort of help to animals in recompense for the great misery that men inflict upon them, and thus for a moment we escape from the incomprehensible horror of existence.

Not one of us knows what effect his life produces, and what he gives to others; that is hidden from us and must remain so, though we are often allowed to see some little fraction of it, so that we may not lose courage.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

This new form of activity medicine I could not represent to myself as talking about the religion of love, but only as an actual putting it into practice.

It is always easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.

Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time.

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

However impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it.

My work comes first, reasons for it follow.

We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run down.

The best way to be thankful is to use the goods the gods provide you.

It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.

Patience is a flatterer, sir, and an ass, sir.

If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do.

It's no good recording stuff and putting it in a drawer. What's the point in that? You've got to get it out there.

My whole philosophy on this sort of thing is very simple. If I have any doubt as to whether I am supposed to do a job or not, I do it, and if someone socks me, I lay off.

We and only we can build our home. It is better to light a candle, than complain endlessly about the darkness all the time.

'Oh my! What a manuever!'

'Come on ref, get in there'

You will say that I am not a success - vaincre or etre vaincu, [to conquer or to be conquered], it doesn't matter to me, one has feeling and movement in any event, and they are more akin than they may seem to be or than can be put into words.

Possunt, quia posse videntur.

I play. But this is what I think.

The wind in which the dead leaves blow. Here I inhale profounder strength And as I am, I speak and move And things are as I think they are And say they are on the blue guitar.

He imposes orders as he thinks of them, As the fox and snake do. It is a brave affair.

We must push forward now, otherwise we risk everything. Hurry yourself with the technical aspects, a lot of time has already been lost.

The mark of leadership is not to stand up when everybody is standing, but rather to actually stand up when no one else is standing.

A deadly streak of passivity of a kind that sometimes goes with perfectionism.

Yep, I'm flyin' through the air, this is not good.

You'll quite remove the ancient curse.

Ralph lay flat and looked up at the palm trees and the sky. 'Meetings. Don't we love meetings? Every day. Twice a day. We talk.' He got on one elbow. 'I bet if I blew the conch this minute, they'd come running. Then we'd be, you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set. When the meeting was over they'd work for five minutes, then wander off or go hunting.'

The problems we see today are going to be a hell of a lot worse in 10 years if we're not willing to face up to them.

Art and politics must move closer together. Reflection and action must be equally valid in good men if history is not to take one course and art an other.

The hour has come; kill the Hun.

The maxim 'nothing avails but perfection' may be spelt shorter: PARALYSIS.

It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.

I don't have a 'you can't do this' voice in my head.

All I had to do was do it.

A man who would be a success the world must first of all be a judge of moods, for untimely speeches will offend the ears and hurt the feelings of others, and so fail in their purpose. He has to beware of such occasions. But falling sick and bearing children and dying - these things take no account of moods. They do not cease because they are untimely. The shifting changes of birth, life, sickness, and death, the real great matters - these are like the surging flow of a fierce torrent, which delays not for an instant but straightway pursues its course. And so, for both priest and layman, there must be no talk of moods in things they must needs accomplish. They must be free from this care and that, they must not let their feet linger.

We'll use a signal I have tried and found far-reaching and easy to yell. Waa-hoo!

A way is made by walking it. A thing is so by calling it.

Resolve your mental energy into abstraction, your physical energy into action. Allow yourself to fall in with the natural order of phenomena, without admitting the element of self, and the empire will be governed.

To stop leaving tracks is easy. Not to walk upon the ground is hard.

Sweet are the words of Love, sweeter his thoughts: Sweetest of all what Love nor says nor thinks.

Worship is not just something we feel, it is something we sweat.

There is a small proportion betwixt a fool who useth not wit because he hath it not and him that useth it not when it should avail him.

'It's time to drop the 'Sable Bomb' on ya!'

To do what ought to be done but what would not have been done unless I did it, I thought to be my duty.

Work towards the cause, not the effect.

When I and stallion blend the grass gets cropped.

Do your neighbour good by all means in your power, moral as well as physical - by kindness, by patience, by unflinching resistance against every outward evil - by the silent preaching of your own contrary life. But if the only good you can do him is by talking at him, or about him - nay, even to him, if it be in a self-satisfied, super-virtuous style - such as I earnestly hope the present writer is not doing - you had much better leave him alone. ~ Ch. 8

A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without vision is but drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope of the world.

Now, nephew to your work! St George for England! Hey!

Archimedes said, 'Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth'; but there isn't one. It is like betting on the future of the human race - I might wish to lay a bet that the human race would destroy itself by the year 2,000, but there is nowhere to place the bet. On the contrary, I am involved in the world and must try to see that it does not blow itself to pieces. I once had a terrible argument with Margaret Mead. She was holding forth one evening on the absolute horror of the atomic bomb, and how everybody should spring into action and abolish it, but she was getting so furious about it that I said to her: 'You scare me because I think you are the kind of person who will push the button in order to get rid of the other people who were going to push it first.' So she told me that I had no love for my future generations, that I had no responsibility for my children, and that I was a phony swami who believed in retreating from facts. But I maintained my position. As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, 'It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so.' You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise.

'We are reminded of the principle of sowing this morning. That is whatever you sow you shall reap. If you sow the seeds of harmony, peace and goodwill you will reap the fruits thereof. If you sow the seeds of discord, hatred and injustice you cannot expect to reap good results. A healthy tree bears healthy fruits while the contrary is true of an unhealthy tree.'

'So many things compete for our attention and action as we address what must be done to take the Fijian race forward.'

Lincoln's proclamation is even more important than the Maryland campaign. Lincoln is a sui generis figure in the annals of history. He has no initiative, no idealistic impetus, cothurnus, no historical trappings. He gives his most important actions always the most commonplace form. Other people claim to be 'fighting for an idea,' when it is for them a matter of square feet of land. Lincoln, even when he is motivated by, an idea, talks about 'square feet.' He sings the bravura aria of his part hesitantly, reluctantly and unwillingly, as though apologising for being compelled by circumstances 'to act the lion.' The most redoubtable decrees - which will always remain remarkable historical documents - flung by him at the enemy all look like, and are intended to look like, routine summonses sent by a lawyer to the lawyer of the opposing party, legal chicaneries, involved, hidebound actiones juris.

...action restarting action: all we need to reverse inertia is some sense of consequence - some sense that beyond this occurrence there is another, and that they are linked, some sense that life has chapters.

because it's Spring thingS dare to do people

'So then: onward to Lumarth, and let meticulous discretion be the slogan!' - Shimilko, in 'The Seventeen Virgins' from Cugel's Saga

You have frightened and daunted me. I will stop stealing at once. - Dhrun

We are all guilty. We decided to become part of a solution instead of just complaining

'Matt [Damon] broke my rib! But I think I strained his neck, we got a little bit carried away'. - about his injury during Dickie's death scene in The Talented Mr. Ripley

...the role of determination is to limit the agonies of doubt and the perils of hesitation when the motives for action are inadequate.

Let me start with a short and simple list. This is not the last word on the topic, but the first word, a simple list of suggestions to get the conversation going. Most of the great wisdom traditions agree that: 1. Spirit, by whatever name, exists. 2. Spirit, although existing 'out there,' is found 'in here,' or revealed within to the open heart and mind. 3. Most of us don't realize this Spirit within, however, because we are living in a world of sin, separation, or duality - that is, we are living in a fallen, illusory, or fragmented state. 4. There is a way out of this fallen state (of sin or illusion or disharmony), there is a Path to our liberation. 5. If we follow this Path to its conclusion, the result is a Rebirth or Enlightenment, a direct experience of Spirit within and without, a Supreme Liberation, which 6. marks the end of sin and suffering, and 7. manifests in social action of mercy and compassion on behalf of all sentient beings. Does a list something like that make sense to you? Because if there are these general spiritual patterns in the cosmos, at least wherever human beings appear, then this changes everything. You can be a practicing Christian and still agree with that list; you can be a practicing Neopagan and still agree with that list.

Why the Hell Not? -campaign slogan

Today, I saw a spark of decency. Lets blow on that spark and give it fuel

Clever boys. They'll do it, if we give them half a chance. They will do it

Wanting to is the whole lesson; all the rest is practice

It makes people willing to act according to what they believe. To say what's in their hearts, regardless of shame. It doesn't change what they feel, what they want. It just helps...loosen them up

[He] had somehow grown up with a belief that unfairness was to be, not endured, but corrected. So when he saw injustice, he corrected it

That's what's eating you alive. That you aren't the kind of guy who takes the law into his own hands. You left the law in other hands and it screwed you over pretty badly

This is a really terrible dream, and I really ought to wake up and end it. And so I did

Tagiri fears the moral ambiguity in something that she knows she must do. She cannot live with not doing it, and yet fears she cannot live with doing it, either. So conceals it from herself in order to proceed with what she must do

What a heavy burden to bear Heaviest because there's nothing I can do Then it's not your burden, is it? The opposite is true. The burden is heavier precisely because I can't do anything about it