Quotes on Acting

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.

To be authentic is literally to be your own author... to discover your own native energies and desires, and then to find your own way of acting on them.

The ultimate, most holy form of theory is action.

The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual; everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort.

Each human being was given two possibilities: action and contemplation. Both lead to the same place.

Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.

The people may be made to follow a path of action but they may not be made to understand it.

Happiness consists in activity. It is a running stream, not a stagnant pool.

All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.

Political institutions, no matter how well or badly designed, depend for continued existence upon acting men; their conservation is achieved by the same means that brought them into being. Independent existence marks the work of art as a product of making; utter dependence upon further acts to keep it in existence marks the state as a product of action.

Knowledge must come through action. You can have no test which is not fanciful, save by trial.

In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon.

The enemy of creativity... is fear. We're all born creative, it takes a little while to become afraid. A surprising insight: an enemy of fear is creativity. Acting in a creative way generates action, and action persuades the fear to lighten up.

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.

I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

In my acting, I have to identify with something in the character. The big tough boy on the side of right - that's me. Simple themes. Same me from the nuances. All I do is sell sincerity and I've been selling the hell out of that ever since I started.

Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.

There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.

If you wait for inspiration, you're not a writer, but a waiter.