Action Quotes

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

"Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame"

"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"

Cicero, Philosopher

"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"

Thomas Jefferson, President

"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you"

Thomas Jefferson, President

"We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action"

Aristotle, Philosopher

"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim"

Aristotle, Philosopher

"A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end"

Aristotle, Philosopher

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

Pythagoras, Mathematician

"Consult: To seek approval for a course of action already decided upon"

Ambrose Bierce, Journalist

"This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in"

Charles Dickens, Novelist

"I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived"

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Poet

"The secret of a leader lies in the tests he has faced over the whole course of his life and the habit of action he develops in meeting those tests"

Gail Sheehy, Writer

"Action is the foundational key to all success"

Pablo Picasso, Artist

"In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action"

Robert G. Ingersoll, Lawyer

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

Confucius, Philosopher

"When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps"

Confucius, Philosopher

"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"

Martin Luther King Jr., Minister

"Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone"

Thomas Carlyle, Writer

"The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest"

Thomas Carlyle, Writer

"Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether"

Thomas Carlyle, Writer

"In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious"

Blaise Pascal, Philosopher

"It is energy - the central element of which is will - that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action"

Samuel Smiles, Author

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

Charles de Gaulle, Leader

"Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself. He imposes his own stamp of action, takes responsibility for it, makes it his own"

Charles de Gaulle, Leader

"Theories are patterns without value. What counts is action"

Constantin Brancusi, Sculptor

"I'm a woman of very few words, but lots of action"

Mae West, Actress

"Action is greater than writing. A good man is a nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to write what is worthy of being read"

Ross Perot, Businessman

"Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction"

Will Rogers, Actor

"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"

W. H. Auden, Poet

"The man whose action habitually bears the stamp of his mind is a genius, but the greatest genius is not always equal to himself, or he would cease to be human"

Honore de Balzac, Novelist

"Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established"

Honore de Balzac, Novelist

"In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head"

Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher

"For every failure, there's an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour"

Mary Kay Ash, Businesswoman

"Have a bias toward action - let's see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away"

Indira Gandhi, Statesman

"It is the around-the-corner brand of hope that prompts people to action, while the distant hope acts as an opiate"

Eric Hoffer, Writer

"Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one's balance and keep afloat"

Eric Hoffer, Writer

"One of the marks of a 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, Writer

"Action and reaction are equal and opposite"

Gertrude Stein, Author

"It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger"

Gertrude Stein, Author

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