Motivational Quotes

Action

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.

- Gaulle, Charles De

Best Quotes about Action

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

Malraux, Andre

All the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atomic bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger.

Zedong, Mao

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

Galsworthy, John

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

Hugo, Victor

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

Lewis, Harvey Spencer

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

Woolf, Virginia

Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating.

Dyer, Wayne

No sooner said than done -- so acts your man of worth.

Ennius, Quintus

He who considers too much will perform little.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

10.

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.

Inge, Dean William R.

11.

You can't start at the top.

Levenson, Samuel

12.

There is no use trying, said Alice; one can't believe impossible things. I dare say you haven't had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Carroll, Lewis

13.

Act, don't react!

14.

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

Carlyle, Thomas

15.

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

Holmes, Marjorie

16.

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.

Hoffer, Eric

17.

If you don't make things happen then things will happen to you.

Company, Lanes

18.

When deeds speak, words are nothing.

Proverb, African

19.

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

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.

Caddy, Eileen

21.

Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not.

Dhammapada

22.

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

23.

A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

24.

Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. [Matthew 7:12]

Bible

25.

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

Levin, James

26.

Take action in order to move toward your goals.

Brown, Les

27.

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

Upanishads, Veda

28.

In this country men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.

Adams, Charles Francis

29.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

30.

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

Wanamaker, John

31.

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

Troward, Thomas

32.

It's motive alone which gives character to the actions of men.

Bruyere, Jean De La

33.

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.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

34.

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

35.

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

Stevenson, Robert Louis

36.

Doing nothing is the most tiresome job in the world because you cannot quit and rest.

37.

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.

Tarentum, Leonidas of

38.

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

Roosevelt, Theodore

39.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

D'Alembert

40.

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

41.

Many are called but few get up.

Herford, Oliver