Quotes about action

The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can.

— Sydney Smith

Heaven never helps the men who will not act.

— Sophocles

Action is the highest perfection and drawing forth of the utmost power, vigor, and activity of man's nature.

— Bishop Robert South

If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.

— Bishop Robert South

No one will do it for you.

— Ben Stein

The mark of a good action is that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Judge each day not by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

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.

— W. Clement Stone

Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.

— W. Clement Stone

So many fail because they don't get started -- they don't go. They don't overcome inertia. They don't begin.

— W. Clement Stone

Now is the season for sailing; for already the chattering swallow is come and the pleasant west wind; the meadows bloom and the sea, tossed up with waves and rough blasts, has sunk to silence. Weigh thine anchors and unloose thy hawsers, O Mariner, and sail with all thy canvas set.

— Leonidas of Tarentum

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

— Russell C. Taylor

Being stuck is a position few of us like. We want something new but cannot let go of the old -- old ideas, beliefs, habits, even thoughts. We are out of contact with our own genius. Sometimes we know we are stuck; sometimes we don't. In both cases we have to DO something.

— Inga Teekens

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

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

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.

— Richard Thalheimer

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

— Henry David Thoreau

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

— Henry David Thoreau

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

— Frank Tibolt

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

— Count Leo Tolstoy

If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it's OK. But you've got to shoot for something. A lot of people don't even shoot.

— Robert Townsend

The soul is made for action, and cannot rest till it be employed. Idleness is its rust. Unless it will up and think and taste and see, all is in vain.

— Thomas Traherne

It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.

— Thomas Troward

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

— Ted Turner

Two-thirds of promotion is motion

— Source Unknown

To look is one thing, to see what you look at is another, to understand what you see is a third, to learn from what you understand is still something else, but to act on what you learn is all that really matters! How do I act?

— Source Unknown

What the mind attends to, the mind considers. What the mind constantly considers, the mind believes. What the mind believes, the mind eventually does.

— Source Unknown

People sitting on top of the world, usually arrived there standing up.

— Source Unknown

None of us are responsible for all the things that happen to us, but we are responsible for the way we act when they do happen.

— Source Unknown

Do it now. Then it's done.

— Source Unknown

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often

— Source Unknown

Activity and sadness are incompatible.

— Source Unknown

Backbone beats wishbone every time.

— Source Unknown

Be both the gardener and the rose.

— Source Unknown

Believe in boys and girls and men and women of a great tomorrow that what so ever the boy soweth the man shall reap.

— Source Unknown

Act, don't react!

— Source Unknown

Better to try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed.

— Source Unknown

Do it this very moment, Don't put it off, There's no use in doing a kindness, if you do it a day too late.

— Source Unknown

Do not ask the Lord to guide your footsteps, If you are not willing to move your feet.

— Source Unknown

Don't look back, just keep on walking.

— Source Unknown

Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it.

— Source Unknown

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.

— Source Unknown

It doesn't do any good to sit up and take notice if you keep on sitting.

— Source Unknown

I like these words -- they seem to suggest action: If you hear a kind word spoken Of some worthy soul you know, It may fill his heart with sunshine If you'd only tell him so. If a deed, however humble, helps you On your way to go, Seek the one whose hand has helped you. Seek him out and tell him so. If your heart is touched and tender Towards sinner log and low, It might help him to do better If you could only tell him so.

— Source Unknown

If you start soon enough, you won't have to run to catch up.

— Source Unknown

No rules for success will work if you don't.

— Source Unknown

Logic will not change an emotion, but action will.

— Source Unknown

Keep your head and your heart going in the right direction and you will not have to worry about your feet.

— Source Unknown

Action is character.

— Source Unknown

It's no good agreeing with a person who can't make up his mind.

— Source Unknown

If your sword's too short, add to its length by taking one step forward.

— Source Unknown

The best way to get something done is to begin.

— Source Unknown

The search for the perfect venture can turn into procrastination. Your idea may or may not have merit. The key is to get started.

— Source Unknown

The only way you can bring in the harvest in the fall is to plant in the spring, and to water, weed, fertilize in the summer

— Source Unknown

The only way to start is to start.

— Source Unknown

The road of life can only reveal itself as it is traveled; each turn in the road reveals a surprise. Man's future is hidden.

— Source Unknown

You can't plow a field by turning it over in your mind.

— Source Unknown

Some people forget to plant in the spring, idle away the summer hours and then expect to reap in the fall.

— Source Unknown

Some people grin and bear it; others smile and do it.

— Source Unknown

As one acts and conducts himself, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.

— Veda Upanishads

When a man dies, what does not leave him? The voice of a dead man goes into fire, his breath into wind, his eyes into the sun, his mind into the moon, his hearing into the quarters of heaven, his body into the land cheerfully. earth, his spirit into space

— Veda Upanishads

Doing leads more surely to talking than talking to doing.

— Vinet

If you could get up the courage to begin, you have the courage to succeed.

— David Viscott

We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.

— Swami Vivekananda

What we need is to use what we have.

— Basil S. Walsh

One may walk over the highest mountain one step at a time.

— John Wanamaker

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

— Rita Warford

Every action is either strong or weak, and when every action is strong we are successful.

— Wallace D. Wattles

Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered.

— Daniel Webster

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

— Bob Wells

Actions lie louder than words.

— Carolyn Wells

In activity we must find our joy as well as glory; and labor, like everything else that is good, is its own reward.

— Edwin P. Whipple

It is better to rust out than wear out.

— George Whitefield

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

— Alfred North Whitehead

Ideas won't keep, something must be done about them.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

— John Greenleaf Whittier

Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

— Oscar Wilde

No, Ernest, don't talk about action. It is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.

— Oscar Wilde

It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.

— Virginia Woolf

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

— William Wordsworth

Your difficulty and my difficulty and the difficulty of every individual who ever desired to achieve something worthwhile, comes in the movement.

— Peter Nivio Zarlenga

To begin, begin.

— Peter Nivio Zarlenga

You have to be before you can do, and do before you can have.

— Zig Ziglar

We will not know unless we begin.

— Howard Zinn

Where others see complexity, the person of action sees the thing that needs to be done.

— Michael Lipsey

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.

— Alexander Pope

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

— Ann Radcliffe

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

— Edmund Burke

Never mistake motion for action.

— Ernest Hemingway

He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.

— Chinese Proverb

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.

— Aristotle

The problem lay buried, unspoken for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban housewife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night, she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question: Is this all?

— Betty Friedan

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

— Eric Hoffer

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

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

— Mark Twain

What is the use of a new song if the dance is still the same? As you set resolutions, change your actions

— Mokgehle William wisbar