ACTION

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.
Aristotle

There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough.
Mother Teresa

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.
Albert Einstein

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.
Honore De Balzac

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
Henri Frederic Amiel

For purposes of action nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
Mother Teresa

We must get beyond debates about the merits of affirmative action and begin to act in the affirmative
Gary Holder-Winfield

The greatest potential for control tends to exist at the point where action takes place.
Louis A. Allen

What really distinguishes this generation in all countries from earlier generations... is its determination to act, its joy in action, the assurance of being able to change things by one's own efforts.
Hannah Arendt

Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
Richard L. Evans

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.
Henry David Thoreau

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou

In this country men seem to live for action as long as they can and sink into apathy when they retire.
Charles Francis Adams

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Andre Gide

Action is coarsened thought; thought becomes concrete, obscure, and unconscious.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Let us do or die.
Robert Burns

I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.
Lord Alfred Tennyson

I will act as if what I do makes a difference.
William James

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Lord Alfred Tennyson

To reach a port we must sail, sometimes with the wind, and sometimes against it. But we must not drift or lie at anchor.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.
Robert H. Schuller

He who walks with the lame learns how to limp.
Latin Proverbs

The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.
Norman Schwarzkopf

Those who are more adapted to the active life can prepare themselves for contemplation in the practice of the active life, while those who are more adapted to the contemplative life can take upon themselves the works of the active life so as to become yet more apt for contemplation.
St. Thomas Aquinas

It was prettily devised of Aesop, ''The fly sat on the axle tree of the chariot wheel and said, what dust do I raise! ''
Francis Bacon

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.
Marcus T. Cicero

I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.
Robert H. Schuller

'Tis God gives skill, but not without men's hand: He could not make Antonio Stradivarius's violins without Antonio.
George Eliot

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a be general natural law.
Immanuel Kant

Winning starts with beginning.
Robert H. Schuller

What really matters is what you do with what you have.
Shirley Lord

Act quickly, think slowly.
Greek Proverbs

No steam or gas ever drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in retrospect.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Every action is either strong or weak, and when every action is strong we are successful.
Wallace D. Wattles

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
Charles De Gaulle

Let your actions always speak for you, but be forever on guard against the terrible traps of false pride and conceit that can halt your progress. The next time you are tempted to boast, just place your fist in a full pail of water, and when you remove it, the hole remaining will give you a correct measure of your importance.
Og Mandino

The dog that trots about finds a bone.
Gypsy Proverbs

It is the direction and not the magnitude which is to be taken into consideration.
Thomas Troward

The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.
Carl Sandburg

Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity.
Johann Kaspar Lavater

Take action in order to move toward your goals.
Les Brown

Fertilizer does no good in a heap, but a little spread around works miracles all over.
Percy Ross

It is no use trying to sum people up. One must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done.
Virginia Woolf

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