Action Quotes

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.

He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.

Everything I did, all my actions, all of the problems I had I dedicate to God and to Chile, because I kept Chile from becoming Communist.

If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, ‘This sucks, I'm going to do my own thing.'

Action is the antidote to despair.

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

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

It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, 'I was wrong'.

Doubt can only be removed by action.

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and have it found out by accident.

Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution.

Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.

Every action of your life touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience.

What I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.

Think not those faithful who praise all thy words and actions, but those who kindly reprove thy faults.

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.

Without action, the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that: intentions.

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

The proof that one truly believes is in action.

An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.

Love is an action you must repeat ceaselessly.

And my parents finally realize I'm kidnapped and they snap into action immediately: They rent out my room.

Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up.

We must be silent before we can listen. We must listen before we can learn. We must learn before we can prepare. We must prepare before we can serve. We must serve before we can lead.

A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.

The happiness of love is in action; its test is what one is willing to do for others.

I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren't enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

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

Men argue. Nature acts.

In the frank expression of conflicting opinions lies the greatest promise of wisdom in governmental action.

Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.

Like everything else, love's not worth much without some action to back it up.

When you learn not to want things so badly, life comes to you.

Words may show a man's wit but actions his meaning.

We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.

You must do the things you think you cannot do.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.

Life is God's novel. Let him write it.

Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

Singing connected with movements and action is a much more ancient, and, at the same time, more complex phenomenon than is a simple song.

My Dear Son... remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.

Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

You've got to seize the opportunity if it is presented to you.

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Enthusiasm is nothing more or less than faith in action.

Let us then be up and doing, With a heart for any fate, Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.

Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.

One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.

There will be sleeping enough in the grave.

Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.

The enjoyment of life would be instantly gone if you removed the possibility of doing something.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.'

Taking action is hard, but know what? Enduring a bad situation can be its own hell.

Play off everyone against each other so that you have more avenues of action open to you.

You have to love what you do to want to do it everyday.

Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the Arctic are a call to action.

A man is at his youngest when he thinks he is a man, not yet realizing that his actions must show it.

Do it and do it now. Err on the side of taking action

Success is doing what you want to do, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want.

Honest hearts produce honest actions.

Be the change you want to see.

Your actions, and your action alone, determines your worth.

Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day.

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.

Like snowflakes, the human pattern is never cast twice. We are uncommonly and marvelously intricate in thought and action, our problems are most complex and, too often, silently borne.

Either move or be moved.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

The shortest answer is doing.

Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favourable do nothing.

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality; they are also dress rehearsals, plans. All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

My words, my writing, my actions—these have never been for myself alone, either directly or indirectly. There is no such thing as an artist who creates art only for himself. That is masturbation.

The only recognizable feature of hope is action.

Generally, my writing is influenced by living, by absorbing everything that happens to me and my actions.

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you I the best place for the next moment.

To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity.

Tennis is a perfect combination of violent action taking place in an atmosphere of total tranquillity.

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves obscure men whose timidity prevented them from making a first effort.

The important thing is somehow to begin.

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving.

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

Nothing is more fearful than imagination without taste.

It is by acts and not by ideas that people live.

Do Something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn't, do something else.

We who in engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.

Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

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.

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.

There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.

It is in the compelling zest of high adventure and of victory, and in creative action, that man finds his supreme joys.

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.

We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.

Practice rather than preach. Make of your life an affirmation, defined by your ideals, not the negation of others. Dare to the level of your capability then go beyond to a higher level.

If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go.

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation.

Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner.

Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action.

Actions lie louder than words.

The greatest happiness is to transform one's feelings into action.

Action makes more fortune than caution.

I was determined that no British government should be brought down by the action of two tarts.

We must care to think about the unthinkable things, because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.

Preferential affirmative action patronizes American blacks, women, and others by presuming that they cannot succeed on their own. Preferential affirmative action does not advance civil rights in this country.

Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.

Publicity is a great purifier because it sets in action the forces of public opinion, and in this country public opinion controls the courses of the nation

A good education is that which prepares us for our future sphere of action and makes us contented with that situation in life in which God, in his infinite mercy, has seen fit to place us, to be perfectly resigned to our lot in life, whatever it may be.

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.

Great actions speak great minds.

Reading is good, action is better.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou.

Your life will be no better than the plans you make and the action you take. You are the architect and builder of your own life, fortune, destiny.

God helps those who help themselves.

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

We call an intention good which is right in itself, but the action is good, not because it contains within it some good, but because it issues from a good intention.

Life is not a series of pathetic, meaningles actions. Some of them are so far from pathetic, so far from meaningless as to be beyond reason, maybe beyond forgiveness.

If you want to get along, go along.

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.

I don't give advice. I can't tell anybody what to do. Instead I say this is what we know about this problem at this time. And here are the consequences of these actions.

Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time.

Dreams grow holy put in action.

In a critical sense, doing nothing can mean doing something. Inaction can be action and embracing this paradox can save your life.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

In spite of your fear, do what you have to do.

Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends.

We've advanced in the construction of a true free-trade area across South America... What's needed now is less rhetoric and more action.

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

Fear could paralyse. Action was the antidote.

It must be an independent House, having a free action of its own, for it is only valuable as being a regulating body, calmly considering the legislation initiated by the popular branch, and preventing any hasty or ill considered legislation which may come from that body, but it will never set itself in opposition against the deliberate and understood wishes of the people.

You need more fact in the dangerous art of giving presents than in any other social action.

It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.

How happy can you be when you think every action and thought is being monitored by a judgmental ghost ?

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions.

Dwell not on the past. Use it to illustrate a point, then leave it behind. Nothing really matters except what you do now in this instant of time. From this moment onwards you can be an entirely different person, filled with Love and understanding, ready with an outstretched hand, uplifted and positive in every thought and deed.

A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.

The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.

We are becoming the servants in thought, as in action of the machine we have created to serve us.

Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction.

It's nothing really. It's the unique presentation that makes me look good in the action scenes. Why did I dare do them? That's a funny question! Why do I act? Why do I breathe!

Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.

You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'

Try first thyself, and after call in God; For to the worker God himself lends aid.

There are thousands willing to do great things for one willing to do a small thing.

Leadership is an action, not a position.

Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right.

I am a Muslim Arab, in my actions oriented very to the left, in my convictions.

Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring.

At the end of the day, every child has learned the Lesson of Spin: Almost every wrong action can be stripped of consequences, along with the need for feelings of guilt and remorse.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Words mean nothing. Action is the only thing. Doing. That's the only thing.

We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.

Action isn't my forte. I'm an expert on contemplation and mild regret.

The bird of paradise alights only upon the hand that does not grasp.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Vision with action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare.

There are neither good nor evil, only the existence and action.

Characterization is an accident that flows out of action and dialogue.

Friends are an aid to the young, to guard them from error; to the elderly, to attend to their wants and to supplement their failing power of action; to those in the prime of life, to assist them to noble deeds.

Inaction may be the biggest form of action.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

I am convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of international terrorism against the United States.

The critic is a man who prefers the indolence of opinion to the trials of action.

The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It's as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.

If you have anything to tell me of importance, for God's sake begin at the end.

It's obvious throughout secular and church history that significant legislation follows only after dramatic action.

The test of any man lies in action.

I would rather have a German division in front of me than a French one behind me.

Unless action is taken soon - unless we can display the same vision of that earlier period - we will lose the treasure of California's open space and environmental beauty.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. You must act as you breathe.

I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.

When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it reluctantly.

Where choice begins, Paradise ends, innocence ends, for what is Paradise but the absence of any need to choose this action?

I do not fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is pounding, saying, Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?

Try out your ideas by visualizing them in action.

To knock a thing down, especially if it is cocked at an arrogant angle, is a deep delight of the blood.

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.

I prefer that animation reach into places where live action doesn't go, and it seems like all of animation nowadays is trying to go where live action is.

I like the variety. But basically my choice of films is a small intimate film. Quiet film, no action, just people in relationships. That's what I like the most.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

Somehow, when we no longer feel in control, we become available to deeper aliveness.

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.

If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.

You have freedom when you're easy in your harness.

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.

Action, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell character.

Why did I spend all these years playing boring Europeans? I was made for action movies.

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.

You are a woman: you must never speak what you think; your words must contradict your thoughts, but your actions may contradict your words.

The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.

There are big men, men of intellect, intellectual men, men of talent and men of action; but the great man is difficult to find, and it needs —apart from discernment —a certain greatness to find him.

Give me the ready hand rather than the ready tongue.

When thought becomes excessively painful, action is the finest remedy.

Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.

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

...There is no study in the world which brings into more harmonious action all the faculties of the mind than [mathematics], ... or, like this, seems to raise them, by successive steps of initiation, to higher and higher states of conscious intellectual being....

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.

One had to take some action against fear when once it laid hold of one.

Action makes more fortune than caution

To live is not breathing it is action.

There are two levers for moving men - interest and fear.

Courage follows action.

To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.

No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap.

Action is consolatory. It is the enemy of thought and the friend of flattering illusions.

I began to have an idea of my life, not as slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know

My combat action has commenced... I've pissed my pants, but only a little.

God didn't call me to be successful, He called me to be faithful.

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason or imagination, rarely or never.

For every action there is an equal and opposite government program.

The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.

The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.

Men of action are favored by the Goddess of luck.

There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.

You can't change who you are but you can surely make the best of it. And if you've got a thought act on it.

Words are a form of action, capable of influencing change.

Some people, in working towards a goal, find themselves seized by inertia when it comes time for action. If this should happen to you, despite the small graduated steps, then it is time to re-examine your goal. Consider how important it actually is and then either discard the goal and replace it with more suitable one or continue the steps with a renewed sense of the value of achieving it.

My reputation grows with every failure.

Good will, like a good name, is got by many actions, and lost by one.

It's easy to work for somebody else; all you have to do is show up.

We are born to action and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first.

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it, to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not, and never persist in trying to set people right.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.

From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

You cannot win if you're not at the table. You have to be where the action is.

I learn by going where I have to go.

Man is most happy, when his own actions are arguments and examples of his virtue.

We learn courageous action by going forward whenever fear urges us back.

You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.

You take people as far as they will go, not as far as you would like them to go.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.

Trust no future, however pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act — act in the living Present! Heart within and God overhead.

Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.

Nothing counts but pressure, pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure through broad organized aggressive mass action.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Tomorrow let us do or die!

Don't just think, do.

By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

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?

It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil — far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind, and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word human disappears from the race.

Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.

The more you are willing to accept responsibility for your actions, the more credibility you will have

If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.

Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.

The first glance at History convinces us that the actions of men proceed from their needs, their passions, their characters and talents; and impresses us with the belief that such needs, passions and interests are the sole spring of actions.

The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow an any cost. To delay action is the same as death.

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.

I shall tell you a great secret my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both

Hope is the first thing to take some sort of action.

Emotion turning back on itself, and not leading on to thought or action, is the element of madness.

My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.

If you can react the same way to winning and losing, that is a big accomplishment. That quality is important because it stays with you the rest of your life.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Those who make some other person their job... are dangerous.

By this action, the Government has proved that so long as it exists, none of us are truly free. Government and freedom are mutually exclusive. So if we value freedom, there's only one conclusion. It's time to get rid of this leftover relic we call Government.

We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.

Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

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

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

The beginning is half of every action

Heaven ne'er helps the men who will not act.

I want to see you shoot the way you shout.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

Whatever we leave to God, God does and blesses us.

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.

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

Appetite is essentially insatiable, and where it operates as a criterion of both action and enjoyment (that is, everywhere in the Western world since the sixteenth century) it will infallibly discover congenial agencies (mechanical and political) of expression.

Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.

The word Action! frees me - the transformation is something I cannot explain - too much analysis might destroy it

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear-sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerally of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

Let us act on what we have, since we have not what we wish.

He is at no end of his actions blestWhose ends will make him greatest, and not best.

The so called unconscious inferences can be traced back to the all-preserving memory, which presents us with parallel experiences and hence already knows the consequences of an action. It is not anticipation of the effects; rather, it is the feeling: identical causes, identical effects . . .

The doer is merely a fiction added to the deed ? the deed is everything.

Enthusiasm... the sustaining power of all great action.

We must be doing something to be happy.

Happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot.

A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. . . .Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not mere companionship.

Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick dispatch.

Ambition is not what a man would do, but what a man does, for ambition without action is fantasy.

The instant formal government is abolished, society begins to act. A general association takes place, and common interest produces common security.

The theater is so endlessly fascinating because it's so accidental. It's so much like life.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.

Reality is a prison, where one vegetates and always will. All the rest - thought, action - is just a pastime, mental or physical. What counts then, is to come to grips with reality. The rest can go.

Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.

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

When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose.

It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility; they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Understanding, and action proceeding from understanding and guided by it, is one weapon against the world's bombardment, the one medicine, the one instrument by which liberty, health, and joy may be shaped . . . in the individual, and in the race.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Life is funny. Life isn't categorized into comedy, drama, action, is it?So I don't know why they try to categorize everything. It drives me crazy-why it would have to be just a romantic comedy or"¦I want to have a little integrity, a little story, you know

It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is often simple patience.

I say that justice is truth in action.

He liked to go from A to B without inventing letters between.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

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.

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.