 |
 | "... Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action
are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what
they do." | |
 |
Bhagavad-Gita
|
|
| "43. Promptly report your action to the one who requested it." | |
|
Morton C. Blackwell
|
|
| "A desire presupposes the possibility of action to achieve it; action
presupposes a goal which is worth achieving." | |
|
Ayn Rand
|
|
| "A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded
for the doer"s need." | |
|
Pedro Calderon
|
|
| "A man is not good or bad for one action." | |
|
Thomas Fuller
|
|
| "A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he
can get out of it." | |
|
John Galsworthy
|
|
| "A man, foreseeing that another will do a certain act, and in nowise
controlling or even influencing him may use that Action as an instrument
to effect his own purposes." | |
|
Albert Pike
|
|
| "A rolling stone can gather no moss." | |
|
Publilius Syrus
|
|
| "A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an
action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all." | |
|
Georges Bernanos
|
|
| "A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the
same thing; only at different times." | |
|
John Dalberg, Lord Acton
|
|
| "Action is the antidote to despair." | |
|
Joan Baez
|
|
| "Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost
power, vigor, and activity of man"s nature." | |
|
Robert South
|
|
| "Action is the last refuge of those who cannot dream." | |
|
Oscar Wilde
|
|
| "Action is transitory,?a step, a blow; The motion of a muscle, this
way or that." | |
|
William Wordsworth
|
|
| "Action may not always bring happiness; But there is no happiness
without action." | |
|
Benjamin Disraeli
|
|
| "Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for
responsibility." | |
|
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
|
|
| "Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived
ends." | |
|
Jawaharlal Nehru
|
|
| "Action without a name, a "who" attached to it, is
meaningless." | |
|
Hannah Arendt
|
|
| "Action without study is fatal. Study without action is
futile." | |
|
Mary Beard
|
|
| "Action, so to speak, is the genius of nature." | |
|
Robert Blair
|
|
| "Actions are the seed of Fate Deeds grow into Destiny." | |
|
A. L. Linall Jr.
|
|
| "Actions lie louder than words." | |
|
Carolyn Wells
|
|
| "All men"s gains are the fruit of venturing." | |
|
Herodotus
|
|
| "All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single
lovely action." | |
|
James Russell Lowell
|
|
| "An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory." | |
|
Friedrich Engels
|
|
| "Before every action ask yourself. Will this bring more monkeys on my
back. Will the result of my action be a blessing or a heavy burden?" | |
|
Alfred Armand Montapert
|
|
| "But men must know, that in this theater of man?s life it is reserved
only for God and angels to be lookers on." | |
|
Francis Bacon
|
|
| "Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all
factors are favorable do nothing." | |
|
William Feather
|
|
| "Courage follows action." | |
|
Mack R. Douglas
|
|
| "Do, or do not. There is no try." | |
|
Yoda
|
|
| "Don"t wait for your ship to come in. Row out to meet it." | |
|
Stevenson
|
|
| "Every action is measured by the depth of the sentiment from which it
proceeds." | |
|
Douglas Jerrold
|
|
| "For every action there is an equal and opposite government
program." | |
|
Bob Wells
|
|
| "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you
want to receive a great deal, you first have to give a great deal. If each
individual will give of himself to whomever he can, wherever he can, in any
way that he can, in the long run he will be compensated in the exact
proportion that he gives." | |
|
R. A. Hayward
|
|
| "For every action, there is an equal and opposite criticism." | |
|
Steven Wright
|
|
| "For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of
thought combined with energy of will." | |
|
Henri-Frederic Amiel
|
|
| "Furious activity is no substitute for understanding." | |
|
H. H. Williams
|
|
| "Get the action habit ? you do not need to wait until conditions are
perfect." | |
|
David. J. Schwartz, PhD
|
|
| "Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, But great actions
speak to all mankind." | |
|
Emily P. Bissell
|
|
| "Heaven never helps the man who will not act." | |
|
Sophocles
|
|
| "However brilliant an action, it should not be esteemed great unless
the result of a great motive." | |
|
François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
|
|
| "Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot
be changed." | |
|
Abraham Lincoln
|
|
| "Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot
find it." | |
|
George Eliot
|
|
| "I am beholden to calumny, that she hath so endeavored to belie
me.?It shall make me set a surer guard on myself, and keep a better watch
upon my actions." | |
|
Ben Jonson
|
|
| "I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I
do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act." | |
|
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
|
|
| "I have always thought the actions of men are the best interpreters
of their thoughts." | |
|
John Locke
|
|
| "I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair." | |
|
Lord Alfred Tennyson
|
|
| "If thou wilt be observant and vigilant, thou wilt see at every
moment the response to thy action. Be observant if thou wouldst have a
pure heart, for something is born to thee in consequence of every
action." | |
|
Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi
|
|
| "If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had
been churches, and poor men?s cottages princes palaces. It is a good
divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what
were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own
teaching." | |
|
William Shakespeare
|
|
| "If you can control a man"s thinking, you do not have to worry about
his actions. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to
concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is
inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for
he will seek it himself . If you make a man think that he is justly an
outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without
being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand
one." | |
|
George G. Woodson
|
|
| "If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you
create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny." | |
|
Andre Maurois
|
|
| "If you do what you"ve always done, you"ll get what you"ve always
gotten." | |
|
Anthony (Tony) Robbins
|
|
| "If your ship doesn?t come in, swim out to it." | |
|
Jonathan Winters
|
|
| "In every case, the remedy is to take action. Get clear about exactly
what it is that you need to learn and exactly what you need to do to learn
it. BEING CLEAR KILLS FEAR. Make it thy business to know thyself, which is
the most difficult lesson in the world." | |
|
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
|
|
| "In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the
world of action." | |
|
Dag Hammarskjöld
|
|
| "Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity and in cold
weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the
mind." | |
|
George H. Allen
|
|
| "Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold
weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the
mind." | |
|
Leonardo da Vinci
|
|
| "It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment
rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened
to things." | |
|
Elinor Smith
|
|
| "It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor
rather than a critic." | |
|
Sir Winston Churchill
|
|
| "It is easy to sit up and take notice. What is difficult is getting
up and taking action." | |
|
Al Batt
|
|
| "It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly." | |
|
Anatole France
|
|
| "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the
strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done
them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly;
who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort
without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do
the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends
himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of
high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while
daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who know neither victory nor defeat." | |
|
Theodore Roosevelt
|
|
| "It is well to think well; it is divine to act well." | |
|
Horace Mann
|
|
| "It"s the action, not the fruit of the action, that"s important. You
have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in
your time, that there"ll be any fruit. But that doesn"t mean you stop
doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your
action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result." | |
|
Mahatma Gandhi
|
|
| "Judge not of actions by their mere effect; Dive to the center, and
the cause detect. Great deeds from meanest springs may take their course,
And smallest virtues from a mighty source." | |
|
Alexander Pope
|
|
| "Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us
the determination to make the right things happen." | |
|
Peter Marshall
|
|
| "Mark this well, ye proud men of action! ye are, after all, nothing
but unconscious instruments of the men of thought." | |
|
Heinrich Heine
|
|
| "My own mind is my own church." | |
|
Thomas Paine
|
|
| "Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act, and makes bold
resolution the favorite of fortune." | |
|
Francis Quarles
|
|
| "Never confuse motion with action." | |
|
Benjamin Franklin
|
|
| "Never mistake motion for action." | |
|
Ernest Hemingway
|
|
| "No action is without its side effects." | |
|
Barry Commoner
|
|
| "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first
be overcome." | |
|
Dr. Samuel Johnson
|
|
| "One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity,
ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear." | |
|
Friedrich Nietzsche
|
|
| "Only actions give life strength; only moderation gives it
charm." | |
|
Jean Paul Richter
|
|
| "Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own
deeds." | |
|
Victor Hugo
|
|
| "Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and
they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven
together." | |
|
Anaïs Nin
|
|
| "Our main business is not to see what lies dimly in the distance, but
to do what lies clearly at hand." | |
|
Thomas Carlyle
|
|
| "Our only true course is to let the motive for action be in the
action itself, never in its reward; not to be incited By the hope of the
result, nor yet indulge a propensity for inertness." | |
|
H. P. Blavatsky
|
|
| "Parties who want milk should not seat themselves on a stool in the
middle of a field in hope that the cow will back up to them." | |
|
Elbert Hubbard
|
|
| "Preachers say, "Do as I say, not as I do"." | |
|
John Selden
|
|
| "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth." | |
|
Henry David Thoreau
|
|
| "Remember this,? that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be
observed in the performance of every act of life." | |
|
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
|
|
| "Rightness expresses of actions, what straightness does of lines; and
there can no more be two kinds of right action than there can be two kinds
of straight lines." | |
|
Herbert Spencer
|
|
| "Say not that honour is the child of boldness, nor believe thou that
the hazard of life alone can pay the price of it: it is not to the action
that it is due, but to the manner of performing it." | |
|
Akhenaton
|
|
| "Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow. Seize the day, trust as
little as possible in tomorrow. ?Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero
(Odes, I.xi.1)" | |
|
Quintus Horatius Flaccus Horace
|
|
| "Sow a Thought, and you reap an Act; Sow an Act, and you reap a
Habit; Sow a Habit, and you reap a Character; Sow a Character, and you
reap a Destiny." | |
|
Charles Reade
|
|
| "The best way out is always through." | |
|
Robert Frost
|
|
| "The biggest sin is sitting on your ass." | |
|
Florynce Kennedy
|
|
| "The brightest blades grow dim with rust, The fairest meadow white
with snow." | |
|
Oliver Wendell Holmes
|
|
| "The busier we are, the more acutely we feel that we live, the more
conscious we are of life." | |
|
Immanuel Kant
|
|
| "The emotions aren"t always immediately subject to reason, but they
are always immediately subject to action." | |
|
William James
|
|
| "The gospel of Jesus Christ is not limited to a system of beliefs; it
is a plan of action." | |
|
Howard W. Hunter
|
|
| "The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost
always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville
points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs
that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The
translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least
likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the
nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the
marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with
passion as a midwife of action ? the ability to pass directly from thought
to action." | |
|
Eric Hoffer
|
|
| "The magnitude of an action may change not only the strength of its
impact, but the direction. If you became a dentist, for example, you would
certainly be an asset to our society. But what if everyone became a
dentist? Who would bake the bread? Who would build the houses?" | |
|
Marilyn vos Savant
|
|
| "The man is quiet, but firm as a rock, yet sensitive to the first
imperceptible signs of impending changes. He does not delay in taking
action." | |
|
I Ching
|
|
| "The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in
retrospect." | |
|
Robert Louis Stevenson
|
|
| "The materials are indifferent, but the use we make of them is not a
matter of indifference." | |
|
Epictetus
|
|
| "The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by
pain, or the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection
of fallacies which do us no harm." | |
|
Samuel Johnson
|
|
| "The most decisive actions of our life ? I mean those that are most
likely to decide the whole course of our future ? are, more often than
not, unconsidered." | |
|
André Gide
|
|
| "The non-action of the wise man is not inaction. It is not studied.
It is not shaken by anything. The sage is quiet because he is not moved,
not because he wills to be quiet.... Joy does all things without concern.
For emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness, silence, and
non-action are the root of all things." | |
|
Chuang Tzu
|
|
| "The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our
actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good,
yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our
reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our
friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with
respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us
when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world." | |
|
Charles Caleb Colton
|
|
| "The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to
attain non-action. One must not wish to leap over everything and penetrate
directly." | |
|
Lu Yen
|
|
| "The shortest answer is doing." | |
|
George Herbert
|
|
| "The time for action is past! Now is the time for senseless
bickering!" | |
|
Ashleigh Brilliant
|
|
| "The truly innocent are those who not only are guiltless themselves,
but who think others are." | |
|
Josh Billings
|
|
| "The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action." | |
|
Nikos Katzenzakis
|
|
| "The world behaves differently when I take action to go after what I
want." | |
|
Price Pritchett
|
|
| "The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions
show that he knows where he is going." | |
|
Napoleon Hill
|
|
| "The young feel tired at the end of an action; The old at the
beginning." | |
|
T. S. Eliot
|
|
| "There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few
that we feel like doing today." | |
|
Mignon McLaughlin
|
|
| "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought." | |
|
Henri Louis Bergson
|
|
| "Thinking will not overcome fear but action will." | |
|
W. Clement Stone
|
|
| "This body, full of faults, Has yet one great quality: Whatever it
encounters in this temporal life Depends upon one"s actions." | |
|
Nagarjuna
|
|
| "This is a world of action, And not for moping and droning in." | |
|
Charles Dickens
|
|
| "Those graceful acts, Those thousand decencies that daily flow From
all her words and actions." | |
|
John Milton
|
|
| "Thought is action in rehearsal." | |
|
Sigmund Freud
|
|
| "Thoughts lead to acts, acts lead to habits, habits lead to character
? and our character will determine our eternal destiny." | |
|
Ezra Taft Benson
|
|
| "To act and act wisely when the time for action comes, to wait and
wait patiently when it is time for repose, put man in accord with the
rising and falling tides (of affairs), so that with nature and law at his
back, and truth and beneficence as his beacon light, he may accomplish
wonders. Ignorance of this law results in periods of unreasoning
enthusiasm on the one hand, and depression on the other. Man thus becomes
the victim of the tides when he should be their Master." | |
|
Helena Petrova Blavatsky
|
|
| "To live is not merely to breathe: it is to act; it is to make use of
our organs, senses, faculties?of all those parts of ourselves which give us
the feeling of existence." | |
|
Jean Jacques Rousseau
|
|
| "True fortitude of understanding consists in not suffering what we do
know to be disturbed by what we do not know." | |
|
Rev. William Paley
|
|
| "Unfortunately, sometimes people don"t hear you until you
scream." | |
|
Stefanie Powers
|
|
| "Unselfish and noble actions are the most radiant pages in the
biography of souls." | |
|
Thomas
|
|
| "Volatility of words is carelessness in actions; words are the wings
of actions." | |
|
Johann Kaspar Lavater
|
|
| "We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put
into it to act." | |
|
Woodrow Wilson
|
|
| "We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or
kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized,
unique." | |
|
John Dewey
|
|
| "We have to understand the world can only be grasped by action, not
by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye...The hand is
the cutting edge of the mind." | |
|
Jacob Bronowski
|
|
| "We have too many high sounding words, and too few actions that
correspond with them." | |
|
Abigail Smith Adams
|
|
| "We know what a person thinks, not when he tells us what he thinks,
but by his actions." | |
|
Isaac Bashevis Singer
|
|
| "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 William Fulbright
|
|
| "We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of
doing it." | |
|
William Hazlitt
|
|
| "We see the world not as it is, but as we are." | |
|
Charles Lamb
|
|
| "We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, As to neglect
the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true
value And commendation to virtue." | |
|
Marcus Tullius Cicero
|
|
| "Whatever our creed, we feel that no good deed can by any possibility
go unrewarded, no evil deed unpunished." | |
|
Orison Swett Marden
|
|
| "Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and
late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never
deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well as
now." | |
|
PhineasTaylor Barnum
|
|
| "When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information
grows unprofitable, sleep."" | |
|
Ursula K. LeGuin
|
|
| "Whoever makes it a rule to test action by thought, thought by
action, cannot falter, and if he does, will soon find his way back to the
right road." | |
|
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
|
|
| "Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?" | |
|
Ralph Waldo Emerson
|
|
| "Words divide us, actions unite us." | |
|
Proverb
|
|
| "Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That"s the only
thing." | |
|
Ernest J. Gaines
|
|
| "Words without actions are the assassins of idealism." | |
|
Herbert Clark Hoover
|
|
| "You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing
temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions." | |
|
Aristotle
|
|
| "You can do anything you think you can. This knowledge is literally
the gift of the gods, for through it you can solve every human problem. It
should make of you an incurable optimist. It is the open door." | |
|
Robert Collier
|
|
| "You can if you think you can." | |
|
George Reeves
|
|
| "You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind." | |
|
Unknown
|
|
| "You judge yourself by what you think you can achieve, others judge
you by what have achieved." | |
|
Kung Fu-tzu Confucius
|
|
| "You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with
the won-lost record of the referee." | |
|
John H. Holcomb
|
|
| "You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we
say." | |
|
John Newton Mitchell
|