Motivational Quotes

Action

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

- Warford, Rita

Best Quotes about Action

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.

Graham, Martha

Doing is a quantum leap from imagining. Thinking about swimming isn't much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away. The defense force inside of us wants us to be cautious, to stay away from anything as intense as a new kind of action. Its job is to protect us, and it categorically avoids anything resembling danger. But it's often wrong. Anything worth doing is worth doing too soon.

Sher, Barbara

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

Iacocca, Lee

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.

Hill, Napoleon

Either move or be moved.

Powell, Colin

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

Holtz, Lou

'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.

Eliot, George

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.

Hoffer, Eric

Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.

Aurelius, Marcus

10.

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

Nin, Anais

11.

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

Lichtenberg, Georg C.

12.

Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.

Proverb, Chinese

13.

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

Galsworthy, John

14.

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

15.

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.

Balzac, Honore De

16.

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

Stone, W. Clement

17.

It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Bronte, Charlotte

18.

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.

19.

A well begun is half ended.

Plato

20.

Before you can do something you must first be something.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice.

Pilgrim, Peace

22.

People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.

Cass, Lewis

23.

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

Heine, Heinrich

24.

It was prettily devised of Aesop, The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said,what dust do I raise!

Bacon, Francis

25.

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

Zarlenga, Peter Nivio

26.

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.

27.

Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.

Rowan, Carl

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.

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.

Vivekananda, Swami

30.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

Aurelius, Marcus

31.

What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations... is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one's own efforts.

Arendt, Hannah

32.

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

Mother Teresa

33.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

34.

We will not know unless we begin.

Zinn, Howard

35.

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

Whittier, John Greenleaf

36.

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

James, William

37.

All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions.

Einstein, Albert

38.

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

Company, Lanes

39.

Be both the gardener and the rose.

40.

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

Croce, Benedetto

41.

If you want a thing done, go. If not, send. The shortest answer is doing.

Proverb, English

42.

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.

Gramsci, Antonio

43.

No one will do it for you.

Stein, Ben

44.

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.

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

A real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken a new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.

Robbins, Anthony

46.

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

47.

My friend, why have you drifted so far away? All motion is relative, maybe it is you who have moved away by standing still.

48.

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

Greene, Robert

49.

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

50.

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

Whitehead, Alfred North