Action Quotes
To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.Henri Cartier - Bresson
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
The great end of life is not knowledge but action.Thomas H. Huxley
Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an ailment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.James Madison, Federalist 10
In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.Aristotle, Nicomachen Ethics (4th c. BC)
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
A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, nothing else.Andre Malraux
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]
Never mistake motion for action.Ernest Hemingway
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 not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is simple patience.Horace Bushnell
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.Jane Addams
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
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.Aristotle
Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.G. M. Trevelyan
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions - - As attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 41
Habits... the only reason they persist is that they are offering some satisfaction... You allow them to persist by not seeking any other, better form of satisfying the same needs. Every habit, good or bad, is acquired and learned in the same way - By finding that it is a means of satisfaction.Juliene Berk
We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.Herman Melville
Thoughts lead on to purposes purposes go forth in action actions form habits habits decide character and character fixes our destiny.Tryon Edwards
Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you ready or not, to put this plan into action.Napoleon Hill
The only cure for grief is action.George Henry Lewes
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 experience.Ralph Waldo Emerson
By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the healing.Richard Milhous Nixon
Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.Claude A. Helvetius
It is the action of an uninstructed person to reproach others for his own misfortune; of one entering instruction, to reproach himself; and one perfectly instructed, to reproach neither others nor himself.Epictetus, Enchiridion
A fanatic is one compelled to action by the need to find a strong meaning in life. The fanatic determines for himself what role he is to play in life, and his intense devotion to a cause is the means.Eugene E. Brussell
Humans always have fear of an unknown situation - - This is normal. The important thing is what we do about it. If fear is permitted to become a paralyzing thing that interferes with proper action, then it is harmful. The best antidote to fear is to know all we can about a situation.John Herschel Glenn, Jr.
Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.Karen Horney
If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying. Handwritten statement found in her residence.Indira Nehru Gandhi
My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope.Herbert Hoove
Sometimes we do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions not answers.John Le Carre, Magnus Pym in "A Perfect Spy".
Thought is the blossom language the bud action the fruit behind it.Ralph Waldo Emerson
As the kindled fire consumes the fuel, so in the flame of wisdom the embers of action are burnt to ashes.Bhagavad Gita
Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to.Alfred A. Montapert
A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange... Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship.Aristotle, Politics
An individual cannot know what he is till he has made himself real by action.Unknown
A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.Arthur W. Radford
