Quotes about action

Then indecision brings its own delays, And days are lost lamenting o'er lost days. Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

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

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When all is said the greatest action is to limit and isolate one's self.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We will burn that bridge when we come to it.

— Nick Gorski

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

— Baltasar Gracian

Dreams will get you nowhere, a good kick in the pants will take you a long way.

— Graffiti

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

— Martha Graham

If you think about it seriously, all the questions about the soul and the immortality of the soul and paradise and hell are at bottom only a way of seeing this very simple fact: that every action of ours is passed on to others according to its value, of good or evil, it passes from father to son, from one generation to the next, in a perpetual movement.

— Antonio Gramsci

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

— Heber J. Grant

The secret to success is to start from scratch and keep on scratching.

— Dennis Green

You have to make it happen.

— Joe Greene

For as one star another far exceeds, So souls in heaven are placed by their deeds.

— Robert Greene

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

— Dag Hammarskjold

Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.

— Mark Victor Hansen

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.

— Vaclav Havel

The more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.

— William Hazlitt

You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.

— William Hazlitt

Mark this well, you proud men of action! you are, after all, nothing but unconscious instruments of the men of thought.

— Heinrich Heine

Never confuse motion with action.

— Benjamin Franklin

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

— Napoleon Hill

Do it now! can affect every phase of your life. It can help you do the things you should do but don't feel like doing. It can keep you from procrastinating when an unpleasant duty faces you. But it can also help you do those things that you want to do. It helps you seize those precious moments that, if lost, may never be retrieved.

— Napoleon Hill

Do not wait; the time will never be just right. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.

— Napoleon Hill

The world has the habit of making room for the man whose actions show that he knows where he is going.

— Napoleon Hill

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

You must get involved to have an impact. No one is impressed with the won-lost record of the referee.

— John H. Holcomb

You don't always win your battles, but it's good to know you fought.

— Marjorie Holmes

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it, but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Don't be a spectator, don't let life pass you by.

— Lou Holtz

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

— Lou Holtz

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

— Horace

He has half the deed done who has made a beginning

— Horace

Don't think, just do.

— Reiko Horton

An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.

— William Dean Howells

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

— Elbert Hubbard

Allow motion to equal emotion.

— Elbert Hubbard

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

— Victor Hugo

Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds.

— Victor Hugo

The action is best that secures the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

— Francis Hutcheson

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

— Thomas H. Huxley

People say to me, You were a roaring success. How did you do it? I go back to what my parents taught me. Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make something happen.

— Lee Iacocca

The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.

— Lee Iacocca

Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then, by God, do something. Don't just stand there, make it happen.

— Lee Iacocca

So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.

— Lee Iacocca

How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive o all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.

— Dean William R. Inge

The successful men of action are not sufficiently self-observant to know exactly on what their success depends.

— Joseph Jacobs

If you want a trait, act as if you already have the trait.

— William James

I will act as if what I do makes a difference.

— William James

Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.

— William James

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.

— William James

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

— William James

Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

— St. Jerome

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

— Immanuel Kant

My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.

— Clarence Buddinton Kelland

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 the something that I can do.

— Helen Keller

Now is the time for all good men to come to.

— Walt Kelly

Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.

— Charles F. Kettering

It is not good enough for things to be planned -- they still have to be done; for the intention to become a reality, energy has to be launched into operation.

— Pir Vilayat Khan

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

— Rabbi Harold S. Kushner

Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

— Michael Landon

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

He who limps is still walking.

— Stanislaw J. Lec

Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.

— David Letterman

Next in importance to having a good aim is to recognize when to pull the trigger.

— Elmer G. Leterman

You can't start at the top.

— Samuel Levenson

Sings. Hope in every sphere of life is a privilege that attaches to action. No action, no hope.

— Peter Levi

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

— James Levin

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

— Harvey Spencer Lewis

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

— Linall Jr. A. L.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

— Abraham Lincoln

As our case is new, we must think and act anew.

— Abraham Lincoln

One thought driven home is better than three left on base.

— James Liter

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

— John Locke

Our deeds disguise us. People need endless time to try on their deeds, until each knows the proper deeds for him to do. But every day, every hour, rushes by. There is no time.

— Haniel Long

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night's repose.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Build today, then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What really matters is what you do with what you have.

— Shirley Lord

If you act like you know what you're doing, you can do anything you want -- except neurosurgery.

— John Lowenstein

As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.

— Lu Xun

Do the things you know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.

— George Macdonald

Existence was given us for action. Our worth is determined by the good deed we do, rather than by the fine emotions we feel,

— Edgar F. Magnin

If you go on working with the light available, you will meet your Master, as he himself will be seeking you.

— Ramana Maharshi

Between eighteen and twenty, life is like an exchange where one buys stocks, not with money, but with actions. Most men buy nothing.

— Andre Malraux

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.

— Maxwell Maltz

Let your actions always speak for you, but be forever on guard against the terrible traps of false pride and conceit that can halt your progress. The next time you are tempted to boast, just place your fist in a full pail of water, and when you remove it, the hole remaining will give you a correct measure of your importance.

— Og Mandino

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.

— Og Mandino

I have never heard anything about the resolutions of the apostles, but a good deal about their acts.

— Horace Mann

Begin where you are; work where you are; the hour which you are now wasting, dreaming of some far off success may be crowded with grand possibilities.

— Orison Swett Marden

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

The common conception is that motivation leads to action, but the reverse is true -- action precedes motivation. You have to prime the pump and get the juice flowing, which motivates you to work on your goals. Getting momentum going is the most difficult part of the job, and often taking the first step is enough to prompt you to make the best of your day.

— Robert J. Mckain

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as courses, and they come back to us as effects.

— Herman Melville

I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs.

— H. L. Mencken

Whatever fortune brings, don't be afraid of doing things.

— A. A. Milne

You will be better advised to watch what we do instead of what we say.

— John N. Mitchell

You can't pick cherries with your back to the tree.

— John Pierpont Morgan

There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough.

— Mother Teresa

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.

— Mother Teresa