Motivational Quotes

Action

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.

- Traherne, Thomas

Best Quotes about Action

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Anything you do can get you fired; this includes doing nothing.

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.

Dimaggio, Joe

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.

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

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

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

Green, Dennis

A well begun is half ended.

Plato

10.

Take the first step, and your mind will mobilize all its forces to your aid. But the first essential is that you begin. Once the battle is startled, all that is within and without you will come to your assistance.

Collier, Robert

11.

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

12.

Doing leads more surely to talking than talking to doing.

Vinet

13.

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.

Khan, Pir Vilayat

14.

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

15.

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

16.

How long will they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?

Marley, Bob

17.

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.

James, William

18.

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

Balzac, Honore De

19.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

20.

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.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

22.

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

Maharshi, Ramana

23.

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

Macdonald, George

24.

The few who do are the envy of the many who only watch.

Rohn, Jim

25.

It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.

Batt, Al

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

Churchill, Winston

29.

To begin, begin.

Zarlenga, Peter Nivio

30.

The only way to start is to start.

31.

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

Morgan, John Pierpont

32.

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

Gracian, Baltasar

33.

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.

34.

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

Mencken, H. L.

35.

It isn't sufficient just to want -- you've got to ask yourself what you are going to do to get the things you want.

Rosen, Richard D.

36.

Those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for contemplation in the practice of the active life, while those who are more adapted to the contemplative life can take upon themselves the works of the active life so as to become yet more apt for contemplation.

Aquinas, St. Thomas

37.

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

Levin, James

38.

Let every man or woman here, if you never hear me again, remember this, that if you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and with what you are. He who would be great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia.

Conwell, Russel H.

39.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

40.

One mustn't allow acting to be like stockbroker -- you must not take it just as a means of earning a living, to go down every day to do a job of work. The big thing is to combine punctuality, efficiency, good nature, obedience, intelligence, and concentration with an unawareness of what is going to happen next, thus keeping yourself available for excitement.

Gielgud, John

41.

Activity and sadness are incompatible.

42.

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

43.

Men do not value a good deed unless it brings a reward.

Ovid

44.

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.

Bronowski, Jacob