Action Quotes

Lucius annaeus seneca - an action will not be right unless the will be...
Abigail adams, letter to john adams, 1774 - we have too many high sounding words, and too few...
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
Evenius - the undertaking of a new action brings new...
Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions but those who kindly reprove thy faults.
Socrates
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]
I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.
Lord Tennyson
When action grows unprofitable, gather information when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
Ursula K. LeGuin
Any religion... is for ever in danger of petrifaction into mere ritual and habit, though ritual and habit be essential to religion.
T. S. Eliot
Discourtesy does not spring merely from one bad quality, but from several - - From foolish vanity, from ignorance of what is due to others, from indolence, from stupidity, from distraction of thought, from contempt of others, from jealousy.
Jean de la Bruyere
Action is only coarsened thought - Thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
Henri Frdric Amiel
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
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life. Too many of us divide and dissipate our energies in debating actions which should be taken for granted.
Ralph W. Sockman
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
The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
My fellow Americans, I must speak to you tonight about a mounting danger in Central America that threatens the security of the United States. This danger will not go away it will grow worse, much worse, if we fail to take action now.
Ronald Reagan
Become aware of internal, subjective subverbal experiences, so that these experiences can be brought into the world of abstraction, of conversation, of naming, etc., with the consequence that it immediately becomes possible for a certain amount of control to be exerted over these hither unconscious and uncontrollable processes.
Abraham Harold Maslow
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
John Stuart Mill
The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.
Confucius
What should move us to action is human dignity the inalienable dignity of the oppressed, but also the dignity of each of us. We lose dignity if we tolerate the intolerable.
Dominique de Menil
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.
Aristotle
Thinking, understanding, reasoning, willing, call not these Soul They are its actions, but they are not its essence.
Akhenaton
Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.
Sharon Salzberg, O Magazine, The Power of Intention, January 2004
A lively, disinterested, persistent looking for truth is extraordinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism or doubt.
Henri Frdric Amiel
Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold - - But so does a hard - Boiled egg.
Unknown
The self is not something ready - Made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.
John Dewey
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
We should often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood our motives.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life.... Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.
Abigail Adams, letter to her sister, Mary Smith Cranch, 1784
Action is the product of the Qualities inherent in Nature.
Bhagavad Gita
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
Bergen Evans
Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
Claude A. Helvetius
Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
In this country men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.
Charles Francis Adams, Sr.
It is a sign of contraction of the mind when it is content, or of weariness.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The man who is completely wise and virtuous has no need of glory, except so far as it disposes and eases his way to action by the greater trust that it procures him.
Plutarch
The path to success is to take massive, determined action.
Anthony Robbins
Many people weigh the guilt they will feel against the pleasure of the forbidden action they want to take.
Peter McWilliams, Life 101
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
By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of the healing.
Richard Milhous Nixon