Action Quotes

We must dare to think about unthinkable things because when things become unthinkable thinking stops and action becomes mindless.

William Fullbright

As life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time, at the peril of being not to have lived.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The good devout man first makes inner preparation for the actions he has later to perform. His outward actions do not draw him into lust and vice rather it is he who bends them into the shape of reason and right judgement. Who has a stiffer battle to fight than the man who is striving to conquer himself.

Thomas a Kempis

Rhythm is the basis of life, not steady forward progress. The forces of creation, destruction, and preservation have a whirling, dynamic interaction.

Kabbalah

Laziness may appear attractive, but work gives satisfaction.

Anne Frank

I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.

Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, 1952

To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action.

Michael Hanson

Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.

Mother Theresa

A good name, like good will, is attained by many actions and may be lost by one.

Author Unknown

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

Pythagoras

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Sir Winston Leonard Spenser Churchill

By these things examine thyself. By whose rules am I acting; in whose name; in whose strength; in whose glory? What faith, humility, self - Denial, and love of God and to man have there been in all my actions?

Jackie Mason

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

Lord Tennyson

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

Thomas Carlyle

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions; but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

Socrates

As one acts and conducts himself, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.

Maitri Upanishads

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.

Japanese Prove

He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.

Victor Hugo

There is no greater challenge than to have someone relying upon you no greater satisfaction than to vindicate his expectation.

Kingman Brewster, Jr.

Words divide us, actions unite us.

Slogan of the Tupamaros

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world. Through this I know the advantage of taking no action.

Lao - Tzu, The Way of Lao - Tzu

It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather that hostile.

Bertrand Russell

How frequently are the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or a shrug. How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped with the imputation of bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper!

Sterne

The best advisers, helpers and friends, always are not those who tell us how to act in special cases, but who give us, out of themselves, the ardent spirit and desire to act right, and leave us then, even through many blunders, to find out what our own form of right action is.

Phillips Brooks

There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

Bertrand Russell

However gradual the course of history, there must always be the day, even an hour and minute, when some significant action is performed for the first or last time.

Peter Quennell

What we call happiness in the strictest sense comes from the preferably sudden satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree.

Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

All the means of action - The shapeless masses - The materials - Lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Every law is an infraction of liberty.

Jeremy Bentham

Never mistake motion for action.

Ernest Hemingway

Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.

Amy Lowell

Holidays are an expensive trial of strength. The only satisfaction comes from survival.

Jonathan Mille

On action alone be thy interest, Never on its fruits. Let not the fruits of action be thy motive, Nor be thy attachment to inaction.

Bhagavad Gita

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

Alfred North Whitehead