Quotes on Action

We should be as careful of our words as of our actions.

A man's intentions should be allowed in some respects to plead for his actions.

When our actions do not, our fears make us traitors.

Act the part and you will become the part.

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished-by fear...be honest with a man and you have no fear. Try to deceive and the relationship deteriorates.

Let's ask God to help us to self-control for one who lacks it, lacks his grace.

The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action.

From a hundred cultures, [there is] one culture which does what no culture has ever done before-gives a place to every human gift.

Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It's a state of mind-you could call it character in action.

As in the case of making a mound, if, before the very last basketful, I stop, then I shall have stopped. As in the case of leveling the ground, if, though tipping only one basketful, I am going forward, then I shall be making progress.

"You were not born to be a second-hander." Howard Roark to Gail Wynand in "The Fountainhead"

Beware! Don't allow yourself to do what you know is wrong, relying on the thought, Later I will repent and ask God's forgiveness.

He who cannot command himself should obey. And many can command themselves, but much is still lacking before they can obey themselves.

How much better to pursue a straight course and eventually reach that destination where the things that are pleasant are the things that are honorable finally become, for you, the same.

Thought and theory must precede all action, that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Sweep away the clutter of things that complicate our lives.

Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.

For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.

New approaches are needed, new orientations in both thought and action. We must make the transition to a new civilization...We are talking of a transition toward a new civilization. No one knows what it will be like. What is important is to orient in that direction... I am convinced that a new civilization will inevitably take on certain features that are characteristic of, or inherent in, the socialist ideal.

You have to assemble your life yourself - action by action.

Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.