Motivational Quotes

Action

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

Best Quotes about Action

You have to be fast on your feet and adaptive or else a strategy is useless.

Gerstner, Lou

An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.

Proverb, Mexican

When we don't have what we like, we must like what we have.

Proverb, French

It is following the line of least resistance that makes men and rivers crooked.

Allow motion to equal emotion.

Hubbard, Elbert

You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

Hubbard, Kin

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

Magnin, Edgar F.

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.

Marden, Orison Swett

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.

Teekens, Inga

10.

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

11.

Hoffer, Eric

12.

Like other revolutionaries I can thank God for the reactionaries. They clarify the issue.

Collingwood, Robin G.

13.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

Aristotle

14.

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.

Townsend, Robert

15.

A good action is never lost; it is a treasure laid up and guarded for the doer's need.

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro

16.

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

Ennius, Quintus

17.

Every accomplishment starts with the decision to try.

18.

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Disney, Walt

19.

You see, in life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know. Knowing is not enough! You must take action.

Robbins, Anthony

20.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

Doing leads more surely to talking than talking to doing.

Vinet

22.

Oh, I'm not going to do anything to them. The thought that I might will be enough to keep them going.

Bowkett, Chris

23.

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

James, William

24.

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

25.

I hear and I forget, I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

Proverb, Chinese

26.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

27.

Either move or be moved.

Powell, Colin

28.

To talk goodness is not good... only to do it is.

Proverb, Chinese

29.

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

30.

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

Howells, William Dean

31.

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

Whittier, John Greenleaf

32.

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.

Keller, Helen

33.

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

Gracian, Baltasar

34.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last --but eat you he will.

Reagan, Ronald

35.

Let no one be deluded that a knowledge of the path can substitute for putting one foot in front of the other.

Richards, Mary Caroline

36.

Thought is the organizing factor in man, intersected between the causal primary instincts and the resulting actions.

Einstein, Albert

37.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

Aikman, Leo

38.

Those old faces, in Pasadena, California, and Tucson, Arizona, and Dallas, crumpling in hatred and fear at the mention of the United Nations or those liberals in government who constitute for them the fifth column of communism, yearn for an America that is as far from the society of the present as is the extended family system in village India.

Segal, Ronald

39.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

40.

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

Levin, James

41.

All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

42.

We will act consistently with our view of who we truly are, whether that view is accurate or not.

Robbins, Anthony

43.

Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.

Croce, Benedetto

44.

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.

Havel, Vaclav

45.

He who walks with the lame learns how to limp.

Proverb, Latin

46.

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

47.

But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.

Einstein, Albert

48.

You can never get enough of the things you don't need, because the things you don't need can never satisfy.

Ashton, Marvin J.

49.

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

50.

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor