Browse 14405 quotes about Action.
“Big Idea - Your days are your life in miniature. As you live your hours, so you create your years. As you live your days, so you craft your life. What you do today is actually creating your future. The words you speak, the thoughts you think, the food you eat and the actions you take are defining your destiny - shaping who you are becoming and what your life will stand for. Small choices lead to giant consequences over time. There's no such thing as an unimportant day.”
Source: The Robin Sharma Pack
“The Ultimate decision, the fastest decision there is, is ACTION!”
“We judge so superficially of things, that common words and actions spoke and done in an agreeable manner, with some knowledge of what passes in the world, often succeed beyond the greatest ability.”
“Contemplation must bring forth right action in order to permit further growth.”
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land
“Where there is no danger of overt action there is rarely any interference with freedom. That is why there has so often been amazing freedom of opinion within an aristocratic class which at the same time sanctioned the ruthless suppression of heterodox opinion among the common people. When the Inquisition was operating most effectively against the bourgeois who had lapsed into heresy, the princes of the Church and the nobles enjoyed the freedom of the Renaissance.”
Source: Men of Destiny (Ppr)
“Our deeds are fetters that we forge ourselves.”
Source: Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life. Book 1, Miss Brooke. 1[,1]
“Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.”
Source: Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life
“The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.”
Source: Silas Marner and Scenes of Clerical Life
“To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is the sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue.”
Source: The Mill on the Floss
“Strong souls Live like fire-hearted suns to spend their strength In farthest striving action; breathe more free In mighty anguish than in trivial ease.”
Source: The Spanish gypsy
“The right word is always a power, and communicates its definiteness to our action.”
Source: Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
“All men are equal in nature, and also in original sin. It is in the merits and demerits of their actions that they differ.”
Source: Nature and grace: selections from the Summa theologica
“The only justifiable stopping place for for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism. This means that all beings with the capacity to feel pleasure or pain should be included; we can improve their welfare by increasing their pleasures and diminishing their pains.”
Source: The expanding circle: ethics and sociobiology
“He who wills believes with a fair amount of certainty that will and action are somehow one; he ascribes the success, the carrying out of the willing, to the will itself, and thereby enjoys an increase of the sensation of power which accompanies all success.”
Source: The Selected Writings of Friedrich Nietzsche
“The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.”
Source: This Business of Living
“Nowadays, suicide is just a way of disappearing. It is carried out timidly, quietly, and falls flat. It is no longer an action, only a submission.”
Source: This Business of Living
“A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.”
Source: This Business of Living: Diary: 1935-1950
“We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement - each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.”
Source: The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle
“What is the highest good in all matters of action? To the name, there is almost complete agreement; for uneducated and educated alike call it happiness, and make happiness identical with the good life and successful living. They disagree, however, about the meaning of happiness.”
Source: The philosophy of aristotle, a new selection with an introd. and commentary by Renford Bambrough. New translations by A. E. Wardman and J. L. Creed
“We are blessed with a faith, which calls into action the whole intellectual man; which prescribes a reasonable service; which challenges the investigation of its evidences; and which, in the doctrine of immortality, invests the mind of man with a portion of the dignity of Divine intelligence.”
Source: Orations and Speeches on Various Occasions
“The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.”
“The distinction between private and public undermines the unity of spiritual strength, draining the public of the transcendent energies while trivializing them because the merely private life provides no proper stage for their action.”
“Rational behavior ... depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at least a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.”
Source: future shock
“Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading.”
Source: Complete writings: with variant readings
“A man that's fond precociously of stirring , :;:; Must be a spoon.”
Source: The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood
“If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.”
Source: Letters of Marshall McLuhan
“Interface, of the resonant interval as 'where the action is', whether chemical, psychic or social, involves touch.”
Source: The global village: transformations in world life and media in the 21st century
“Internal differences within the Nation of Islam forced me out of it. I did not leave of my own free will. But now that it has happened, I intend to make the most of it. Now that I have more independence of action, I intend to use a more flexible approach toward working with others to get a solution to this problem.”
“This is a time for action — not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery.”
Source: My Day: The Best of Eleanor Roosevelt's Acclaimed Newspaper Columns, 1936-1962
“The apprehensive faculty must be scrutinised in action.”
Source: Stephen Hero
“When a man can't explain a woman's actions, the first thing he thinks of is the condition of her uterus.”
“In every relationship, the work is never just in the positive actions we do for each other, but in the follow up.”
“I can’t help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for action; climb back up for self-awareness and gratitude.”
“For carbon-neutral cities, there are things worth talking about in how our consumption patterns can change - sharing goods, etc. - but those are a fraction of the impacts of transportation and building energy use. If we need to choose priority actions, the most important things are to densify, provide transit, and green the buildings.”
“Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting, where, And when, and how thy business may be done. Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller, Though he alights sometimes still goeth on.”
Source: The temple, sacred poems and private ejaculations. [With] The synagogue
“A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as forThy laws Makes it and th'action fine.”
“From thinking proceeds speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable and tremendous!”
Source: The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts; with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations
“The views of men can only be known, or guessed at, by their words or actions.”
Source: The Writings of George Washington: pt. IV. Letters official and private, from the beginning of his presidency to the end of his life: (v. 10) May, 1789-November, 1794. (v. 11) November, 1794-December, 1799
“Differences in political opinions are as unavoidable as, to a certain point, they may perhaps be necessary; but it is exceedingly to be regretted that subjects cannot be discussed with temper on the one hand, or decisions submitted to without having the motives, which led to them, improperly implicated on the other; and this regret borders on chagrin when we find that men of abilities, zealous patriots, having the same general objects in view, and the same upright intentions to prosecute them, will not exercise more charity in deciding on the opinions and actions of one another.”
Source: The real George Washington
“Three things prompt men to a regular discharge of their duty in time of action: natural bravery, hope of reward, and fear of punishment.”
Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious
“It rarely happens otherwise than that a thorough-faced coquette dies in celibacy, as a punishment for her attempts to mislead others, by encouraging looks, words, or actions, given for no other purpose than to draw men on to make overtures that they may be rejected.”
Source: Letters and Addresses,
“There is a Destiny which has the control of our actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.”
Source: The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources, 1745-1799
“A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.”
“If what the philosophers say be true, that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain, so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.”
Source: The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments
“Every habit and faculty is preserved and increased by correspondent actions, as the habit of walking, by walking; of running, by running.”
Source: The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses, in Four Books, Preserved by Arrian ; The Enchiridion, and Fragments
“It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.”
Source: The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings
“Who isn't frustrated and does not prove it by his actions - if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance.”
Source: The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962
“Take the sum of human achievement in action, in science, in art, in literature subtract the work of the men above forty, and while we should miss great treasures, even priceless treasures, we would practically be where we are today ... The effective, moving, vitalizing work of the world is done between the ages of twenty-five and forty.”
“It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.”
Source: The Collected Essays & Addresses of the Rt. Hon. Augustine Birrell, 1880-1920 ...
“If ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.”