Action Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident.

Francesco Guicciardini

A zeal for the defence of their country led these heroes to the scene of action, though with a few men to attack a powerful army of experienced warriors.

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Benjamin Disraeli

It is vain to say that human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Charlotte Brontë

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action.

When faith and hope fail, as they do sometimes, we must try charity, which is love in action. We must speculate no more on our duty, but simply do it. When we have done it, however blindly, perhaps Heaven will show us why.

Every word, facial expression, gesture, or action on the part of a parent gives the child some message about self-worth. It is sad that so many parents don't realize what messages they are sending.

He who has no taste for order, will be often wrong in his judgment, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

It is energy - the central element of which is will - that produces the miracle that is enthusiasm in all ages. Everywhere it is what is called force of character and the sustaining power of all great action

Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

William Kingdon Clifford

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

Definition of design = Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state.

Herbert A. Simon

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only, that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.

Archibald MacLeish

A dramatist is one who believes that the pure event, an action involving human beings, is more arresting than any comment that can be made upon it.

Thornton Wilder

Right action tends to be defined in terms of general individual rights and standards that have been critically examined and agreed upon by the whole society.

Lawrence Kohlberg

In the split second from the time the ball leaves the pitcher's hand until it reaches the plate you have to think about your stride, your hip action, your wrist action, determine how much, if any the ball is going to break and then decide whether to swing at it.

Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.

We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.

Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.

Joseph de Maistre

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.

Wendell Phillips

This, and this alone, is Christianity, a universal holiness in every part of life, a heavenly wisdom in all our actions, not conforming to the spirit and temper of the world but turning all worldly enjoyments into means of piety and devotion to God.