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 took me years to figure out that you don't fall into a tub of butter, you jump for it.

You cannot have a proud and chivalrous spirit if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit.

You have to make it happen.

Whether or not anyone could have done it is not what's important. What is important is whether or not anyone would have done it.

Any serious attempt to try to do something worthwhile is ritualistic.

Fortune favors the audacious.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

Americans are willing to go to enormous trouble and expense defending their principles with arms, very little trouble and expense advocating them with words. Temperamentally we are ready to die for certain principles (or, in the case of overripe adults, send youngsters to die), but we show little inclination to advertise the reasons for dying.

To get what you want, STOP doing what isn't working.

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

Even as the Sun doth not wait for prayers and incantations to rise, but shines forth and is welcomed by all: so thou also wait not for clapping of hands and shouts and praise to do thy duty; nay, do good of thine own accord, and thou wilt be loved like the Sun.

The ignorant are a reservoir of daring. It almost seems that those who have yet to discover the known are particularly equipped for dealing with the unknown. The unlearned have often rushed in where the learned feared to tread, and it is the credulous who are tempted to attempt the impossible. They know not whither they are going, and give chance a chance.

Our doubts about ourselves cannot be banished except by working at that which is the one and only thing we know we ought to do. Other people's assertions cannot silence the howling dirge within us. It is our talents rusting unused within us that secrete the poison of self-doubt into our bloodstream.

The individual's most vital need is to prove his worth, and this usually means an insatiable hunger for action. For it is only the few who can acquire a sense of worth by developing and employing their capacities and talents. The majority prove their worth by keeping busy.

When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen.

In morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only attains its full value when realized in the world as fact.

The quicker humanity advances, the more important it is to be the one who deals the first blow.

In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it.

True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.

The force of the blow depends on the resistance. It is sometimes better not to struggle against temptation. Either fly or yield at once.

In tactics, action is the governing rule of war.

You can't expect to hit the jackpot if you don't put a few nickels in the machine.

I never lose an opportunity of urging a practical beginning, however small, for it is wonderful how often in such matters the mustard-seed germinates and roots itself.

How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.

I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took any excuse.

The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency he has a right thus to act.

Well, now that he's finished one building, he'll go write four books about it.

Two possibilities: making oneself infinitely small or being so. The second is perfection, that is to say, inactivity, the first is beginning, that is to say, action.

Towards the avoidance of a piece of verbal confusion: What is intended to be actively destroyed must first of all have been firmly grasped; what crumbles away crumbles away, but cannot be destroyed.

Death confronts us not unlike the historical battle scene that hangs on the wall of the classroom. It is our task to obscure or quite obliterate the picture by our deeds while we are still in this world.

To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Behold the life at ease; it drifts, The sharpened life commands its course.

While we read history we make history.

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.

If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks exactly as it were not there.

If you feel that the Chief of the General Staff talks only rubbish, my place is not here. Better to give me a command at the front where I can be of better use!

We are defined by how we use our power.

No matter how big or soft or warm your bed is, you still have to get out of it.

The keen spirit Seizes the prompt occasion, makes the thought Start into instant action, and at once Plans and performs, resolves and executes!

Mere longevity is a good thing for those who watch Life from the side lines. For those who play the game, an hour may be a year, a single day's work an achievement for eternity.

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Don't find fault, find a remedy.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.

What we do belongs to what we are; and what we are is what becomes of us.

Religion? Yes, I know it well; I've heard its prayers and creeds, And seen men put them all to shame with poor, half-hearted deeds. They follow Christ, but far away; they wander and they doubt. I'll serve him in a better way, and live his precepts out.

Look around for a place to sow a few seeds.

Every man is a potential genius until he does something.

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

Indolence is heaven's ally here, And energy the child of hell: The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear But brims the poisoned well.

Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.

Youth is the time when hearts are large, And stirring wars Appeal to the spirit which appeals in turn To the blade it draws.

It's time that we move from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.