Action Quotes

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

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

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

Everyone has a right to his own course of action.

Moliere

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Set your expectations high find men and women whose integrity and values you respect get their agreement on a course of action and give them your ultimate trust.

John Fellows Akers

If our actions stem from honesty, kindness, caring, and vision, then no matter what the result of our efforts, we have added something of value to our souls and to the world.

Joan Boysenko, Pocketful of Miracles

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

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

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

Robert Louis Stevenson

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

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

Aristotle

The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action. There is no fixed teaching. All I can provide is an appropriate medicine for a particular ailment.

Bruce Lee, Quotation from the book: (The Art of Jeet Kune Do) by Bruce Lee

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

Iron rusts from disuse water loses its purity from stagnation and in cold weather becomes frozen even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind.

Leonardo DaVinci

When action grows unprofitable, gather information when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Ursula K. LeGuin

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

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

There is not any memory with less satisfaction than the memory of some temptation we resisted.

James Branch Cabell

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

Jonathan Mille

All action is of the mind and the mirror of the mind is the face, its index the eyes.

Cicero

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.

Confucius, The Confucian Analects

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

Concern should drive us into action, not into a depression.

Karen Horney