Action Quotations
Alfred North Whitehead:
We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are
immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
Aristotle:
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just
acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Arnold Toynbee:
Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two
things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a
definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.
Benjamin Disraeli:
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Franklin:
There are no gains without pains.
Benjamin Jowett:
We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in
general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.
Charlotte Whitton:
Big words seldom accompany good deeds.
Colleen C. Barrett:
When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more
bricklayers.
Cyrus Curtis:
There are two kinds of people who never amount to much: those who cannot do what
they are told, and those who can do nothing else.
Danilo Dolci:
It's important to know that words don't move mountains. Work, exacting work
moves mountains.
Dhammapada:
Just as a flower, which seems beautiful has color but no perfume, so are the
fruitless words of a man who speaks them but does them not.
Edmund Burke:
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a
little.
Edmund Burke:
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke (attributed):
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edward Ericson:
The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the
world must first move himself.
Edwin Markham:
We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.
Elbert Hubbard:
To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Eleanor Roosevelt:
You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Ella Williams:
Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.
Epictetus:
First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus:
In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the
real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and
principles.
Ernest Hemingway:
Never mistake motion for action.
Franklin D. Roosevelt:
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly
and try another. But above all, try something.
Frederick Douglass:
I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
Frederick Douglass:
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who
want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and
lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle
may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must
be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it
never will.
George Bernard Shaw:
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a
life spent in doing nothing.
George Eliot:
The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business
of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance,
degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.
Georges Bernanos:
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.
Goethe:
Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all
inaction.
Goethe:
Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our
way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed
ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity
with them which immediately vanishes before our waking eye; and yet we cannot
tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us.
Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as well as
truth can move and spur us on to action. Now because action is always a decisive
factor, something really good can result from an active error, because the
effect of all that has been done reaches out into infinity. So although creative
action is certainly always best, destroying what has been done is also not
without happy consequence.
Goethe:
Knowing is not enough; we must apply!
Harold Nicolson:
We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts.
Helen Keller:
I long to accomplish a great and noble tasks, but it is my chief duty to
accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moved
along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of
the tiny pushes of each honest worker.
Helen Keller:
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the
children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the
long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
The heights by great men reached and kept / Were not attained by sudden flight,
/ But they, while their companions slept, / Were toiling upward in the night.
Herman Melville:
We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand
invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes
and return to us as results.
Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC:
Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou
shalt not be a bystander.
Hugh Prather:
To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My
only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
Jane Addams:
Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
Jimmy Carter:
I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to
choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now,
my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and
effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do
whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with
whatever I have to try to make a difference.
Joe Hill:
I will die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning -- organize.
John Andrew Holmes:
Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often
substitutes for both.
John Dewey:
Arriving at one point is the starting point to another.
John F. Kennedy:
As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation
is not to utter words, but to live by them.
John Locke:
I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their
thoughts.
John Wesley:
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in
all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as
long as ever you can.
Kahlil Gibran:
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that
is idle.
Kenneth Patton (adapted):
By the choices and acts of our lives, we create the person that we are and the
faces that we wear. By the choices and acts of our lives we give to the world
wherein our lives are lived, hoping that our neighbors will find our
contributions to be of worth, and hoping that the world will be a little more
gracious for our time in it.
Laurence J. Peter:
There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who
did and never thought.
Leo Tolstoy:
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Lin Yutang:
Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving
things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lloyd Jones:
Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try
nothing and succeed. (adapted)
Margaret Mead:
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the
world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Med Yones:
Happiness is Action. Action is the most
potent instrument of change. If you want a change, take action. Some
people can help you find happiness, but keeping it requires practice. If you
want to be happy practice being happy.
Mohammed:
Our true wealth is the good we do in this world. None of us has faith unless we
desire for our neighbors what we desire for ourselves.
Mohandas Gandhi:
The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice
to solve most of the world's problems.
Moliere:
It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we
do not do.
Noam Chomsky:
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from
the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly
castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
Oliver Wendell Holmes:
Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
Paul Ricoeur:
The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final
object of all our conduct.
Paulo Freire:
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means
to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Pearl S. Buck:
The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the
impossible -- and achieve it, generation after generation.
Pearl S. Buck:
You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make
yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
Pete Seeger:
"Do-so" is more important than "say-so."
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Skill to do comes of doing.
Rita Mae Brown:
Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you
work.
Robert Collyer:
A man's best friends are his ten fingers.
Robert F. Kennedy:
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to
change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be
written the history of this generation.
Robert Frost:
The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing
to let them.
Robert L. Stevenson:
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to
labor.
Rudyard Kipling:
Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: -- "Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.
Theodore Roosevelt:
It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done 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, who
knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy
cause, who at best knows achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least
fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Thomas Alva Edison:
Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production
or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system,
planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to
do is not doing.
Thomas Carlyle:
Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer
the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.
Thomas H. Huxley:
The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
Thomas Jefferson:
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of
it.
Tom Robbins:
The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that
is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c)
doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead
of creating the perfect love.
Ursula K. LeGuin:
Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade
all the time, made new.
Vaclav Havel:
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am
willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us:
serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest
roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and
for the whole.
Victor Frankl:
We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a
deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.
W. Clement Stone:
When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with
enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.
Walter Linn:
It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will
do when they don't have to.
William James:
He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if
he had tried and failed.
Woody Guthrie:
Take it easy -- but take it.
Yoda:
Do, or do not. There is no try.
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