Action Quotes
Actions lie louder than words.Carolyn Wells
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
When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence, and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.John Steinbeck, East of Eden
My father always told me that all businessmen were sons of bitches, but I never believed it till now. - - Comment made 10 April 1962 in reaction to news that U. S. Steel was raising prices by $6 per ton, right after the unions negotiated a modest new contract under pressure from JFK to keep inflation down.John F. Kennedy, "A Thousand Days, " by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. [1965]
Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life, it is life itself.Henry Havelock Ellis
His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory", 1996
There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.G. B. Shaw
The sounder your argument, the more satisfaction you get out of it.Edward W. Howe
The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.Thomas Aquinas
I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change and that passe abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.Camille Paglia
There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.James Branch Cabell
Think and feel yourself there! To achieve any aim in life, you need to project the end - Result. Think of the elation, the satisfaction, the joy! Carrying the ecstatic feeling will bring the desired goal into view.Grace Speare
The sinners sins against himself; the wrongdoer wrongs himself, becoming the worse by his own action.Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book nine
His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.Lois McMaster Bujold
To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.Henri Cartier - Bresson
Action is only coarsened thought - Thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.Henri Frdric Amiel
Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk we must act big.Theodore Roosevelt
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!William Shakespeare, "Hamlet", Act 2 scene 2
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.Sir Winston Churchill, Radio speech, 1939
Every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, but private interest. By this interest we must govern him, and by means of it, make him cooperate to public good, notwithstanding his unsatiable avarice and ambition.Alexander Hamilton, P. 217 - A History of the American People by P. Johnson
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.Bertrand Russell
The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.Confucius, The Confucian Analects
Mere sorrow, which weeps and sits still, is not repentance. Repentance is sorrow converted into action; into a movement toward a new and better life.M. R. Vincent
We must dare to think unthinkable thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about unthinkable things because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.James W. Fulbright, March 27, 1964
History balances the frustration of how far we have to go with the satisfaction of how far we have come. It teaches us tolerance for the human shortcomings and imperfections which are not uniquely of our generation, but of all time.Lewis F. Powell, Jr.
To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do, Ohara Publications
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.James Russell Lowell
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.John Locke
Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.Sharon Salzberg, O Magazine, The Power of Intention, January 2004
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
Nothing is as terrible to see as ignorance in action.Johann von Goethe
The action of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.John Locke
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
As the kindled fire consumes the fuel, so in the flame of wisdom the embers of action are burnt to ashes.Bhagavad Gita
Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.Aristotle
