Action Quotes

Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

Claude A. Helvetius

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

Henri Cartier - Bresson

The self is not something ready - Made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.

John Dewey

Man supposes that he directs his life and governs his actions, when his existence is irretrievably under the control of destiny.

Johann von Goethe

Solon used to say that speech was the image of actions... that laws were like cobwebs, - - For that if any trifling or powerless thing fell into them, they held it fast while if it were something weightier, it broke through them and was off.

Laertius Diogenes

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timourous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence a.

Samuel Johnson

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

The greatest potential for control the ends to exist at the point where action takes place.

Louis A. Allen

Action: the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

Oscar Wilde

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

Bertrand Russell

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

Words divide us, actions unite us.

Slogan of the Tupamaros

A vision without action is called a daydream; but then again, action without a vision is called a nightmare.

Jim Sorensen

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

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Thomas H. Huxley

If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.

Antonio Gramsci

Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circumference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe - - The open sesame to every soul.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Concern should drive us into action and not into depression.

Karen Horney

Odd, the years it took to learn one simple fact that the prize just ahead, the next job, publication, love affair, marriage always seemed to hold the key to satisfaction but never, in the longer run, sufficed.

Amanda Cross

It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, inventions and actions of others.

Johann Kaspar Lavate

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.

Aristotle

Through his mastery of storytelling techniques, he has managed to separate his character, in the public mind, from his actions as president. ... He has, in short, mesmerized us with that steady gaze.

Jean Nathan Mille

Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.

Anais Nin

The only cure for grief is action.

George Henry Lewes

Never mistake motion for action.

Ernest Hemingway

Knowledge must come through action; you can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

Sophocles, Trachiniae

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

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.

Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing buy rational actions.

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

The ultimate most holy form of theory is action.

Nikos Kazantzakis

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 superior man is modest in his speech but exceeds in his actions.

Confucius

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

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

George Bernard Shaw

Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it a charm.

Jean Paul Richte

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

Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.

Sharon Salzberg, O Magazine, The Power of Intention, January 2004