Action Quotes

These quotes provide us with inspiration to do something positive in our life and earn respect for what we do, thereby making us guide and mind our own actions and take full responsibility of them.

The cosmos is neither moral or immoral; only people are. He who would move the world must first move himself.
Edward Ericson

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
Noam Chomsky

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail.
Pearl S. Buck

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.
Robert F. Kennedy

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible -- and achieve it, generation after generation.
Pearl S. Buck

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.
Albert Einstein

You really can change the world if you care enough.
Marian Wright Edelman

There are basically two types of people. People who accomplish things, and people who claim to have accomplished things. The first group is less crowded.
Mark Twain

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Annie Dillard

There are two kinds of failures: those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought.
Laurence J. Peter

Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Aristotle

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy

There are no gains without pains.
Benjamin Franklin

Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.
Alexander Pope

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.
Lin Yutang

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver

Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
Alexander Pope

We cannot think first and act afterward. From the moment of birth we are immersed in action, and can only fitfully guide it by taking thought.
Alfred North Whitehead

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
Edmund Burke

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
Anais Nin

Never mistake motion for action.
Ernest Hemingway

To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.
Anatole France

Big words seldom accompany good deeds.
Charlotte Whitton

If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.
Alex Noble

Just as a flower, which seems beautiful has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of a man who speaks them but does them not.
Dhammapada

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke

When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.
Colleen C. Barrett

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus

Arriving at one point is the starting point to another.
John Dewey

We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
Herman Melville

Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it -- but sail we must and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back -- but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.
Marian Wright Edelman

We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.
Marian Wright Edelman

I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.
Frederick Douglass

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw

There are two kinds of people who never amount to much: those who cannot do what they are told, and those who can do nothing else.
Cyrus Curtis

It's important to know that words don't move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains.
Danilo Dolci

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Edmund Burke

Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

One act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world.
Ann Radcliffe

We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualized, unique.
Benjamin Jowett

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much,
and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
Georges Bernanos

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
Hugh Prather

Action indeed is the sole medium of expression for ethics.
Jane Addams

I will die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning -- organize.
J oe Hill

Do not say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders, so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.
Goethe

Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.
Rita Mae Brown

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.
Robert L. Stevenson

Speech is conveniently located midway between thought and action, where it often substitutes for both.
John Andrew Holmes

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.
Holocaust Museum

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
John F. Kennedy

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
John Wesley

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
Elbert Hubbard

If you want anything said, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.
Margaret Thatcher

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.
Kahlil Gibran

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.
Edwin Markham

If you don't like the way the world is, you change it. You have an obligation to change it You just do it one step at a time.
Marian Wright Edelman

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.
John Locke

A man's best friends are his ten fingers.
Robert Collyer

Knowing is not enough; we must apply!
Goethe

Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance.
Thomas Carlyle

The world is filled with willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
Robert Frost

We are all inclined to judge ourselves by our ideals; others, by their acts.
Harold Nicolson

It's time for greatness -- not for greed. It's a time for idealism -- not ideology. It is a time not just for compassionate words, but compassionate action.
Marian Wright Edelman

You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.
Epictetus

Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates to invention. It shocks us out of sheeplike passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving.
John Dewey

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.
Ella Williams

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.
Mohandas Gandhi

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.
Moliere

To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action.
Michael Hanson

Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.
Paul Ricoeur

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
Pearl S. Buck

The ancestor of every action is a thought.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do-so" is more important than "say-so."
Pete Seeger

Thought is the blossom; language the bud; action the fruit behind it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing: -- "Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade.
Rudyard Kipling

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
Talmud

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
Thomas H. Huxley

Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Skill to do comes of doing.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.
Ursula K. LeGuin

We can discover this meaning in life in three different ways: (1) by doing a deed; (2) by experiencing a value; and (3) by suffering.
Victor Frankl

I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson

When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.
W. Clement Stone

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Thomas Jefferson

It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don't have to.
Walter Linn

He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had tried and failed.
William James

Do, or do not. There is no try.
Yoda

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