quotations about action
The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, Sep. 19, 1938
So on autopilot are you that your actions are only half conscious at best.
SETH ODELL
"Dip to White: Breaking Through with TV Spots", Inside Higher Ed, September 1, 2016
So many of man's actions appear to have no immediate consequence but, concealed, do their work until finally all catches up and forms a complex web of cause and effect.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Action is character.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Notes for The Last Tycoon
Action is but coarsened thought; thought become concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
Sometimes we have to do a thing in order to find out the reason for it. Sometimes our actions are questions, not answers.
JOHN LE CARRÉ
A Perfect Spy
Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
It is so easy to do a dirty thing with self-satisfaction when it consists in abstaining from action.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880
I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.
HENRI BERGSON
speech at the Descartes Conference in Paris, 1937
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
As a man believes, so he will act.
SAM HARRIS
The End of Faith
We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
An action is the perfection and publication of thought.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nature
Never confuse movement with action.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
attributed, Papa Hemingway
Action without a name, a "who" attached to it, is meaningless.
HANNAH ARENDT
The Human Condition
A man often imagines that he acts, when he is acted upon.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
Your actions are like a beacon of light that other staff can aspire to follow and depend upon for guidance.
MAHMUD MOHAMMED
"Nigeria: Budget Constraint Crippling the Judiciary, Says CJN", All Africa, September 6, 2016
Action is eloquence.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus
Make your actions deliberate, not rushed and random.
STATE JOURNAL STAFF
"Leap Day offers extra time to focus on 'big-picture' -- use it wisely", The State Journal, February 29, 2016
It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd