Quotes on Action

Fear or stupidity has always been the basis of most human actions.

What simple action could you take today to produce a new momentum toward success in your life?

Normativity, I believe, is very different from motivating force. Neither includes, or implies, the other. Other animals can be motivated by their desires and beliefs. Only we can understand and respond to reasons.

The course of my long life hath reached at last in fragile bark over a tempestuous sea the common harbor, where must rendered be account for all the actions of the past.

God is well pleased when all our actions proceed from love, love to Himself, and love to immortal souls.

Tragedy is an imitation not only of a complete action, but of events inspiring fear and pity. Such an effect is best produced when the events come on us by surprise; and the effect is heightened when, at the same time, they follow as cause and effect. The tragic wonder will then be great than if they happened of themselves or by accident; for even coincidences are most striking when they have an air of design.

Like a great athlete, we must have a very clear vision of what we want to accomplish before we make a move. Vision, in preparation for an action, is as important as the action itself.

An old man was asked what had robbed him of joy in his life. His reply was, "Things that never happened."

Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.

Your attitude determines your actions, and your actions determine your accomplishment.

Human beings thrive on action. Stagnation does not wear well with us. We are said to have our origins as hunter-gatherers. We run and we chase. We are problem-solvers. We must be continuously tested and we continuously test ourselves. And it will not end until our lives end because of life itself.

We have to think about affirmative action and craft it in such a way where some of our children, who are advantaged, aren't getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who struggled more.

For me the present is merged in eternity. I may not sacrifice the latter for the present.

A state is not a mere society, having a common place, established for the prevention of mutual crime and for the sake of exchange. Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not mere companionship.

Look through the whole history of countries professing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle of action - that the end will sanction any means.

Whatever is done without ostentation, and without the people being witnesses of it, is, in my opinion, most praiseworthy: not that the public eye should be entirely avoided, for good actions desire to be placed in the light; but notwithstanding this, the greatest theater for virtue is conscience.

The second rule is: Never go outside the experience of your people. When an action is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear, and retreat.

We judge others by their actions but we judge ourselves by our intensions.

Happiness is a sort of action.

Name a moral statement or action, uttered or performed by a religious person that could not have been uttered or performed by an unbeliever.

Appetite is essentially insatiable, and where it operates as a criterion of both action and enjoyment (that is, everywhere in the Western world since the sixteenth century) it will infallibly discover congenial agencies (mechanical and political) of expression.