Quotes on Action

If we are to help heal the world, we need to remember that it is a sacred place. Our actions need to be positive statements, reminders that even in the worst times there is a world worth struggling for.

When we pull back the curtain and take a look at what our 'colorblind' society creates without affirmative action, we see a familiar social, political, and economic structure - the structure of racial caste. The entrance into this new caste system can be found at the prison gate.

Parents who discipline their child by discussing the consequences of their actions produce children who have better moral development , compared to children whose parents use authoritarian methods and punishment.

If you don't like your situation in life, don't fret or worry--do something about it. Worry less, and act more.

A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.

The unhappy persistence of both the practice and the lingering effects of racial discrimination ...is an unfortunate reality...and the government is not disqualified from acting in response to it.

We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They're really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

We are in a period when old questions are settled and the new are not yet brought forward. Extreme party action, if continued in such a time, would ruin the party. Moderation is its only chance. The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power

All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

We could get more action in the South because the Negroes had a feeling that they were being oppressed. But you take New York, for example: they'd give Negroes little five-cent jobs here and there - and they thought they had something. And the same in Chicago and any of the metropolitan areas.

The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.

Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference - in our own lives and those of others.

Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position - arms folded, butch-looking...you know - I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said 'because it is a defensive action and therefore weak.

Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.

We have said that the State must not absorb the individual or the family; both should be allowed free and untrammelled action so far as is consistent with the common good and the interest of others. Rulers should, nevertheless, anxiously safeguard the community and all its members; the community, because the conservation thereof is so emphatically the business of the supreme power, that the safety of the commonwealth is not only the first law, but it is a government's whole reason of existence.

In Buddhist teaching, ignorance is considered the fundamental cause of violence - ignorance... about the separation of self and other... about the consequences of our actions.

The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.