Quotes About Action

Both renunciation of action and the performance of action lead to Nirvana (Liberation); but these performance of action is superior to renunciation of action. The action of today becomes the destiny of tomorrow.

Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

It is not sufficient to pray diligently for guidance, but this prayer must be followed by meditation as to the best methods of action and then action itself... because prayers can only be answered through action and if someone's action is wrong, God can use that method of showing the pathway which is right.

There is likely to be a lag between the need for action and government ["an individual's" or "a team's"] recognition of the need; a further lag between recognition of the need for action and the taking of action; and a still further lag between the action and its effects

The truth is that even in the information age, information is not enough. if all we needed were ideas and positive thinking, then we all would have had ponies when we were kids and we would all be living our "dream life" now. Action is what unites every great success. Action is what produces results. Knowledge is only potential power until it comes into the hands of someone who knows how to get himself to take effective action. In fact, the literal definition of the word "power" is "the ability to act."

Action had to be taken in response to the terrorist attacks on September 11, but I am very concerned about the current administration's rhetoric and apparent zeal to expand military action to other places. I'm afraid that terrorism is being used as an excuse, not only for possible military action in such places as Iraq, Iran, and the Philippines, but also for exorbitant increases in defense spending that have nothing to do with terrorism.

For at no time are any events predestined. There should be no such word in your vocabulary, for with every moment you change, and every heartbeat is an action, and every action changes every other action.

Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.

As far as I'm concerned all theatre is physical. As Aristotle says, you know, theatre is an act and an action, and he didn't mean just the writing of it, he meant that at the centre of any piece there is an action, a physical action.

It's always irritated me that people say, 'Where's the action? Oh wow, there's no action here; let's go somewhere else.' These people will never find the action.

In contrast to the knowledge that keeps man in a passive quietude, Desire dis-quiets him and moves him to action. Born of Desire, action tends to satisfy it, and can do so only by the 'negation,' the destruction or at least the transformation, of the desired object: to satisfy hunger, for example, the food must be destroyed or, in any case, transformed. Thus all action is 'negating'.

We place the highest value on actual implementation and taking action. There are many things one doesn’t understand and therefore, we ask them why don’t you just go ahead and take action, try to do something? You realize how little you know and you face your own failures and you simply can correct those failures and redo it again and at the second trial you realize another mistake or another thing you didn’t like so you can redo it once again. So by constant improvement, or, should I say, the improvement based upon action, one can rise to the higher level of practice and knowledge.

I'm not a fan of action movies. I don't watch many action movies, I don't have a lot of references except for 70s action movies or cinema noir.

To have an idea of a thing is not just to get certain sensations from it. It is to be able to respond to the thing in view of its place in an inclusive scheme of action; it is to foresee the drift and probable consequence of the action of the thing upon us and of our action upon it.

Back in the Bruce Lee era, and in my era, Kung-Fu stirred up a kind of frenzy, and many people were learning martial arts from us. But about a decade ago, Hollywood began bringing in a number of our action choreographers, including two from my own stunt crew, where they became martial arts directors. Now, a decade later, Hollywood has learned it all, so when you look at the action films they're making now, they all use our action, our martial arts, and then add to that their own technology which is ten times better than ours, and it has to leave us dumbfounded: how did they film that?

One of the biggest mistakes that most people make is clinging to the excuse that the time isn't quite right to take action. Well, let me tell you something: In my experience, conditions are never right at the right time. The timing is always wrong. So if you're waiting for everything to be perfect before taking action, you have a foolproof excuse for never taking action.

Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

Exasperation with the threefold frustration of action -- the unpredictability of its outcome, the irreversibility of the process, and the anonymity of its authors -- is almost as old as recorded history. It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality of agents.

It has been asserted that there is a separate species on the earth to correspond with each one of the stars. Now if the earth provides in each species a focus for the action of each star, why may not a similar provision be made among other heavenly bodies that are subject to the action of their fellows?

There are only two ways: either we love-and love in action is service - or we put hatred into action and destroy.

In every physical action, unless it is purely mechanical, there is concealed some inner action, some feelings. This is how the two levels of life in a part are created, the inner and the outer. They are intertwined. A common purpose brings them together and reinforces the unbreakable bond.

As blacks, we need not be afraid that encouraging moral development, a conscience and guilt will prevent social action. Black children without the ability to feel a normal amount of guilt will victimize their parents, relatives and community first. They are unlikely to be involved in social action to improve the black community. Their self-centered personalities will cause them to look out for themselves without concern for others, black or white.

The knowledge we now consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information effective in action, information focused on results. Results are outside the person, in society and economy, or in the advancement of knowledge itself. To accomplish anything this knowledge has to be highly specialized.

I'm doing my best. I read in the paper that I'm an action director. They always say that, "Action director Walter Hill", if they bother writing about me at all. I think that's fine. I'm happy to do the work.

Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it's all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters.

The strength required for the vision of the most powerful reality is not only compatible with the most powerful strength for action, for monstrous action, for crime - it even presupposes it.

You have to assemble your life yourself - action by action.

Whatever is done lovingly, with righteous purity and with peace of mind, is a good action. Everything which is done with the stain of desire and with agitation filling the mind is classified as a bad action.

Do not use thought to ground a political practice in Truth; nor political action to discredit, as mere speculation, a line of thought. Use political practice as an intensifier of thought, and analysis as a multiplier of the forms and domains for the intervention of political action.

It may be unfathomable in architecture, but it is very practical, or routine, for a person in theater to use action. You have the line, "Come home, son," but you can't play that line by going out and being a mother; you can't be a noun. But you can play to smother your son; you can play to grovel to your son. Again, the real information is carried in action. And, to an annoying degree, theater people talk to each other in infinitive expressions. If you don't have a vivid verb to describe what you're doing, you're probably going to be a pretty bad actress.

No one is immune from either taking the wrong action or not taking action at all, but the sense that something is completely out of a person's control is stronger in China.

Vision = Focus / Focus = Attention / Attention = Action /Action = Results / Consistent Results = Destiny

The dreamers ride against the men of action. Oh see the men of action falling back.

Indicate which principles you support regarding affirmative action and discrimination. 1. The federal government should discontinue affirmative action programs. 2. The federal government should prosecute cases of discrimination in the public sector. 3. The federal government should prosecute cases of discrimination in the private sector.

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.

We regard our living together not as an unfortunate mishap warranting endless competition among us but as a deliberate act of God to make us a community of brothers and sisters jointly involved in the quest for a composite answer to the varied problems of life. Hence in all we do we always place man first and hence all our action is usually joint community oriented action rather than the individualism.

I think that most of the action in religion is around the home, is in families, and is in individual lives, and they can go on their own searches, watch their own TV shows, read their own books, form their own groups and discuss it, but that's where the action is - on the home front.

The vision must be realistic - it has to be based on clear distinctive competencies. Again, what would the world lose if you didn't exist? A vision is very powerful because it gives you a basis to judge every action you take. Every action should be viewed through the prism of whether it furthers the vision.

Thought and theory must precede all action, that moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Buddhists have a long-standing tradition of believing that at some level we always know what the best course of action is in any given situation. We just have to be quiet enough to let that course of action present itself to us. And we need the confidence to act when life shows us what we need to do.

Once you start deliberately offering thought, then you can never offer enough action to keep up with the thought. Once you access the Energy that creates worlds, a huge vortex comes into place, and there's just not enough action for you to keep up with that. And so, what you have to do is visualize every step of the way, envision you happy in the process. Envision things in place, envision people catching on. Just envision it working. Skip over the how and the where and the when and the who - and just stay focused upon the what and the why. Abraham

The most interesting acquaintanceship I have struck up here is that of Colonel Lapinski. He is without doubt the cleverest Pole - besides being an homme d'action [man of action] - that I have ever met. His sympathies are all on the German side, though in manners and speech he is also a Frenchman. He cares nothing for the struggle of nationalities and only knows the racial struggle. He hates all Orientals, among whom he numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, etc., with equal impartiality.... His aim now is to raise a German legion in London.

As this body of knowledge has evolved, a much more critical job for researchers and scientists has evolved into explaining and educating policy makers and the public to the risks of global warming and the possible consequences of action or of no action.

Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.

Personal power involves producing success through modeling what works and taking consistent action towards your goals. At the same time, you have to internalize behavioral and belief changes in order to take the necessary action to produce the results. It's been said that successful people do what others won't, and that if you believe you can or you believe you can't, you're right. Both of those statements are true.

Action is pretty boring to do as an actor. Action and sex scenes are silly because it's all faking.

Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance - a flailing of the arms to to regain one's balance. To dispose a soul to action, we must upset its equilibrium.

Thought is the creative power, or the impelling force which causes the creative power to act; thinking in a Certain Way will bring riches to you, but you must not rely upon thought alone, paying no attention to personal action. That is the rock upon which many otherwise scientific metaphysical thinkers meet shipwreck–the failure to connect thought with personal action.