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Action Quotes

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Action Quotes

“Self-interest and mutual interest are inextricably linked. National interests can best be advanced through collective action, ... Calculate not just the human misery of the poor themselves. Calculate our loss: The aid, the lost opportunity to trade, the short-term consequences of the multiple conflicts; the long-term consequences on the attitude to the wealthy world of injustice and abject deprivation amongst the poor.”

WorldHumansLongSelfActionOpportunityLostTermInterestLossPoorAttitudeConflictConsequenceTradeMiseryInjusticeAidsLong TermCollectivesMutualWealthyMultipleLinkedShort TermSelf InterestDeprivationNational InterestsCollective ActionLost OpportunityMutual Interest
Author:Tony Blair
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“The earth will continue to regenerate its life sources only as long as we and all the peoples of the world do our part to conserve its natural resources. It is a responsibility which every human being shares. Through voluntary action, each of us can join in building a productive land in harmony with nature.”

WorldHumansLongActionEarthNatureNaturalHuman BeingsResponsibilityShareLandBuildingSourceResourcesHarmonyProductiveConservationNatural ResourcesNature Conservation
Author:Gerald R. Ford
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“Do not despise the fish because they are absolutely unable to speak or to reason, but fear lest you may be even more unreasonable than they by resisting the command of the Creator. Listen to the fish, who through their actions all but utter this word: 'We set out on this long journey for the perpetuation of our species.”

MayLongReasonActionSpeakJourneySpeciesFishesCreatorCommandDespiseUnreasonableResistingLong Journey
Book:Exegetic Homilies (The Fathers of the Church, Volume 46)
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“I think Nature, if she interests herself much about her children, must often feel that, like the miserable Frankenstein, with her experimenting among the elements of humanity, she has brought beings into existence who have no business here; who can do none of her work, and endure none of her favours; whose life is only suffering; and whose action is one long protest against the ill foresight which flung them into consciousness.”

IfsThinkingFeelsChildrenLongActionLife IsSufferingHumanityInterestCan DoExistenceConsciousnessElementsEndureIllMiserableProtestFavourForesight
Book:The Nemesis of Faith
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“Men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.”

MenWellsLongActionDesireTurnsBornCompanyBreakVirtueHonestHonorInstinctVicesNobleShakesHonourDeniedVirtuousDispositionForbiddenConstraintsSpursServitudeNature Of ManSubjection
Author:Francois Rabelais
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“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.”

WritingTryingLongActionLastsGivenMemoriesPracticeEarsCastsPensPolishParagraphDepositsMould
Book:The Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq: With Memoirs of His Life and Writings
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“Wherever moral ambition exists, there right exists. And moral ambition itself must be presumed present in subconsciousness, even when the conscious self seems to reject it, so long as society has resources for bringing it into action; in much the same way that the life-saver presumes life to exist in the drowned man until he has exhausted his resources for recovering respiration.”

MenWayLongSelfSeemsActionMoralAmbitionConsciousResourcesRejectsExhaustedRecoveringRespiration
Author:William Ernest Hocking
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“As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.”

MayLongSelfStatesDoneActionFallResultsEffortConsciousnessProduceNormalCriticismContemplationStablePerpetualPrimitiveModerationProgressionEquilibriumUnstableMorbidRight ActionSelf Criticism
Author:Herbert Spencer
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“There is no action of man in this life that is not the beginning of so long a chain of consequences as no human providence is high enough to give a man a prospect in the end. And in this chain, there are linked together both pleasing and unpleasing events in such manner as he that will do anything for his pleasure must engage himself to suffer all the pains annexed to it.”

MenGivingHumansLongEndsEnoughActionPainTogetherSufferingPleasureEventsConsequenceChainsThis LifeProvidenceLinked
Book:The Essential Leviathan: A Modernized Edition
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“The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the "general principles which are always the same." In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy. Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments.”

PeopleIfsGivingMayLongDoePhilosophyActionPoliticalOpinionPrinciplesDoubtInfluenceDevelopmentConcernedTasksConservativePhilosopherPracticalsRangeConsistentlyOrganizeMaximsPublic OpinionConservatismPolitical PhilosophyOften IsGuiding PrinciplesConservative Political
Author:Friedrich August von Hayek
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“During the years I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, the most resistant audiences I ever faced in the process of doing corporate workshops on equality in the workplace were not male executives - they were the wives of male executives. As long as her income came from her husband, she was not feeling generous when affirmative action let another woman have a head start vying for her husband's (her) income.”

YearsLongFeelingsActionProcessCitiesAudienceWifeNew YorkDirectorsHusbandOrganizationMalesIncomeCorporateGenerousBoardsExecutivesNew York CityChaptersWorkplaceWorkshopsAffirmative ActionAffirmativeBoard Of DirectorsAnother WomanHead Start
Author:Warren Farrell
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“If we are looking for one single action which will enable the poor to overcome their poverty, I would go for credit. Money is power. I have been arguing that credit should be accepted as a human right. If we can come up with a system which allows everybody access to credit while ensuring excellent repayment - I can give you a guarantee that poverty will not last long.”

IfsGivingShouldHumansLongHas BeensI CanActionLastsPoliticsPoorPovertyEconomyOvercomingCome UpCreditAccessArguingAcceptedExcellentLiberalismGuaranteesGuarantees ThatRepayment
Author:Muhammad Yunus
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“The action stuff takes a long time but when you're there and you're doing it and you go into that take and you run and everything is blowing up around you and you're diving onto something it's actually incredibly thrilling and you feel like a kid again. Like a kid, who used to play and pretend all those things would happen and now they're actually happening.”

FeelsLongPlayHappensRunningKidsActionUsedStuffLong TimeHappeningsThrillingDivingBlowing Up
Author:Stanley Tucci
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“I'm a long way from being evicted [at the age of 14], but I'll never forget it. I'll never forget the feeling. I'll never forget my mom crying and I'll never forget the thought I had: 'Well the only thing I can do is just go build my body,' because the men who were successful that I knew of - Stallone, Arnold, Bruce Willis - they were men of action.”

MenWayWellsLongI CanFeelingsBodyAgeActionCan DoForgetSuccessfulCryHe ManMomMy MomNever ForgetLong WayForget It
Author:Dwayne Johnson
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“Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough (and for a worthy man perhaps too much) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostasy.”

MenWellsLongEnoughActionDealsPrinciplesVirtueToo MuchHonestGuiltVicesWorthyContactMotiveManlyInfamyScrutinizeToo NiceApostasy
Book:The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke: On Conciliation with America; Security of the Independence of Parliament; on Mr. Fox's East India
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“The persons whom you have idolized can never, in the end, be ungrateful, and, probably, at the time of retreat they still do justice to your heart. But, so long as you must draw persons too near you, a temporary recoil is sure to follow. It is the character striving to defend itself from a heating and suffocating action upon it.”

HeartPersonsLongStillsEndsCharacterActionJusticeDrawsStriveTemporaryRetreatUngratefulSuffocatingHeatingRecoilIdolized
Book:The Woman and the Myth: Margaret Fuller's Life and Writings
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“The most reckless sinner against his own conscience has always in the background the consolation that he will go on in this course only this time, or only so long, but that at such a time he will amend. We may be assured that we do not stand clear with our own consciences so long as we determine or project, or even hold it possible, at some future time to alter our course of action.”

MayLongActionCoursesClearGoes OnProjectsConscienceDetermineBackgroundsSinnerConsolationAssuredRecklessFuture Time
Author:Johann Gottlieb Fichte
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“Nonviolent actions are by their nature androgynous. In them the two impulses that have long been treated as distinct, 'masculine' and 'feminine,' the impulse of self-assertion and the impulse of sympathy, are clearly joined; the very genius of nonviolence, in fact, is that it demonstrates them to be indivisible, and so restores human community.”

HumansLongTwoSelfFactsActionCommunityGeniusTreatedImpulseFeminineNonviolenceMasculineAssertionIndivisibleMasculine And FeminineAndrogynous
Book:We cannot live without our lives
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“Buddhists have a long-standing tradition of believing that at some level we always know what the best course of action is in any given situation. We just have to be quiet enough to let that course of action present itself to us. And we need the confidence to act when life shows us what we need to do.”

KnowsNeedsBelieveLongEnoughShowsActionCoursesGivenLevelsSituationConfidenceQuietStandingTraditionBuddhistStillness
Book:Sex, Sin, and Zen: Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between
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“It is an assumption that there is always one single dimension for assessing persons and their actions that has canonical priority. This is the dimension of moral evaluation; "good/evil" is supposed always to trump any other form of evaluation, but that is an assumption, probably the result of the long history of the Christianisation and then gradual de-Christianisation of Europe, which one need not make. Evaluation need not mean moral evaluation, but might include assessments of efficiency, ... simplicity, perspicuousness, aesthetic appeal, and so on.”

NeedsMeanPersonsLongMightActionFormEvilResultsMoralTrumpEuropeSimplicityPrioritiesAppealsAssumptionDimensionsAestheticEfficiencyAssessmentEvaluationGood EvilAssessing
Author:Raymond Geuss
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“For some time there was a widely held notion (zealously fostered by the daily press) to the effect that the 'thinking ocean' of Solaris was a gigantic brain, prodigiously well-developed and several million years in advance of our own civilization, a sort of 'cosmic yogi', a sage, a symbol of omniscience, which had long ago understood the vanity of all action and for this reason had retreated into an unbreakable silence.”

ThinkingYearsWellsLongReasonActionBrainSilenceMillionsEffectsCivilizationOceanUnderstoodPressesNotionSymbolsVanityCosmicLong AgoSageYogiUnbreakableOmniscienceSolaris
Author:Stanislaw Lem
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“It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. The funds that a government spends for whatever purposes are levied by taxation. And taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend.”

ThinkingKnowsWantMeanLongImportantStatesGovernmentAbleActionRememberPurposeTaxesPaidThreatAffairViolentResistanceFundHopelessOfferingTaxationTaxpayersDisobedienceInterference
Book:Human Action
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“We have got to defeat this attack on the freedom of the mind...But it takes courage for a young man with a family to stand up to it; all the more obligation on those of us who have nothing left to lose. At any age it is better to be a dead lion than a living dog - though better still, of course, to be a living and victorious lion - but it is easier to run the risk of being killed (or fired) in action if before long you are going to be dead anyway. This freedom seems to me the chief consolation of old age.”

IfsMenMindLongStillsSeemsRunningAgeActionYoungCoursesLeftLosesRiskDogEasierDefeatObligationOld AgeChiefsYoung ManLionsConsolation
Author:Elmer Davis
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