Quotes About Action

A person is praiseworthy for a right action to the extent that her action manifests, and is rationalized by, good will, that is, concern for the right and the good, not necessarily under the description "right" or "good". A person is blameworthy for a wrong action to the extent that her action manifests, and is rationalized by, ill will - concern for the wrong and bad, also de re - or moral indifference - lack or deficiency of good will.

A good Judoka never anticipates his action in a match, but his mind is as clever as a polished mirror which enables him to foresee precisely anything to happen and he displays freedom of his physique to cope with any change. Such mental state and physical action are called sei or tranquility and do or action, sometimes they are called ju and go or tenderness and sturdiness, in and yo or negative and positive, etc.

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

I approach every film I do in the same way, whether it's an action film or not an action film. I guess if a certain physicality lends itself to action, but I started acting before I reached puberty. I was 7 years old when I started acting. It wasn't until I became a bouncer in New York.

Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.

I’m much better at working out ideas in action than I am in theorizing about it and then transferring my thinking to action. I don’t work that way. I work with tentative ideas and I experiment and then with that experimentation in action, I finally come to the conclusions about what I think is the right way to do it.

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.

Perfection of rhythm, balanced perfection of rhythm. Everything in Nature is expressed by rhythmic waves of light. Every thought and action is a light-wave of thought and action. If one interprets the God within one, one's thoughts and actions must be balanced rhythmic waves. Ugliness, fears, failures and diseases arise from unbalanced thoughts and actions. Therefore think beauty always if one desire vitality of body and happiness.

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?

You have been created with the ability to change the world. Every single choice you make ... every single action you take ... matters. But remember, the converse is also true. Every choice you do not make ... every action you do not take ... matters just as much.

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

Action arising out of suffering is contaminated with suffering and causes further suffering, and that is karma. Action that arises out of a state of "acceptance" is totally free of karma. And there is a vast difference.

Dreaming is a form of action. Idleness is a form of action. The idle man stares at the sky and sees what constitutes our eternal ceiling. The sky is one of the things that constructs us, one of our constants. But it is not what people believe. I should like to close this circle by turning over in my bed and scrutinizing the stars.

Scientists say every action initiates an equal and opposite reaction. I say that's just the start. I say every action initiates a most unequal and upredictable chain reaction, that every filament of living becomes part of a larger weave, while remaining identifiable. That every line of latitude requires several stripes of longitude to obtain meaning. That every universe is part of a bigger heaven, a heaven of rhythm and geometry, where a heartbeat is the apex of a triangle.

I assure you, my children, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you so often, and hammered away at it, that the Christian vocation consists in making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my children, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives.

Since you own your life, you are responsible for your life. You do not rent your life from others who demand your obedience. Nor are you a slave to others who demand your sacrifice. You choose your own goals based on your own values. Success and failure are both the necessary incentives to learn and to grow. Your action on behalf of others, or their action on behalf of you, is only virtuous when it is derived from voluntary, mutual consent. For virtue can only exist when there is free choice.

We can't tell China what to do if we don't do it ourselves. You don't inspire someone to take an action by refusing to take it yourself. We are in a race to be the dominant clean-energy provider to the world. Maybe this goes without saying: We've got to get China into an international protocol and the magic words are "common responsibility with differentiated action."

My greatest personal mistake is ever to allow a word or moment that “doesn’t count,” i.e., that I do not refer to my own basic principles. Every word, every action, every moment counts. (This is the pattern on which everybody makes mistakes [or] becomes irrational — not relating their one action or one conviction to another.

Acting is doing, because everything you say or do is some kind of an action, some kind of a verb. You're always connected to the other person through some kind of action.

There are some long silences in Scandinavian and some Japanese films, when the audience knows action is taking place, but the audience hears no action.

The world can't have a global solution to climate change with U.S. action alone; and the world can't have a global solution without U.S. action.

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.

Meditation means awareness. Whatsoever you do with awareness is meditation. Action is not the question, but the quality that you bring to your action. Walking can be a meditation if you walk alertly. Sitting can be a meditation if you sit alertly. Listening to the birds can be a meditation if you listen with awareness. Just listening to the inner noise of your mind can be a meditation if you remain alert and watchful. The whole point is: one should not move in sleep. Then whatsoever you do is meditation.

Unless there be correct thought, there cannot be any action, and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.

In the life of the human spirit, words are action, much more so than many of us realize who live in countries where freedom of expression is taken for granted. The leaders of totalitarian nations understand this very well. The proof is that words are precisely the action for which dissidents in those countries are being persecuted.

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.

The morality of an action depends on the motive from which we act. If I fling half a crown to a beggar with intention to break his head and he picks it up and buy victuals with it, the physical effect is good. But with respect to me the action is very wrong.

If there is an ‘overabundance’ of an idea in the absence of direct governmental action - which there well might be when compared with some ideal state of public debate - then action disfavoring that idea might ‘un-skew,’ rather than skew, public discourse.

Success will be measured by change in the appallingly high levels of violence directed at women online and in the physical world, and change in the low levels of women's participation in public life.That change will require collective action, just as the changes so far have taken collective action.

Some people call Police Story the greatest action film of all time, and while I have to be humble and say that I disagree, it's definitely the favorite action film I've ever made.

I am a product of affirmative action. I am the perfect affirmative action baby. I am Puerto Rican, born and raised in the south Bronx. My test scores were not comparable to my colleagues at Princeton and Yale. Not so far off so that I wasn't able to succeed at those institutions.

Everything today is such a massive visual show. It's very rare to get a film where the characters are raw and real - and you can take people back to where they are watching live cinema. With character-driven action. Not visual-driven action.

[A]ffirmative action in the United States has made blacks. . .who have largely lifted themselves out of poverty, look like people who owe their rise to affirmative action and other government programs.

Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.

Empathy makes you more aware of other people's suffering, but it's not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.

And we think that our citizens and yours would be very angry if they thought that we hadnt taken every possible step for prevention and then for joint action in the likelihood of those who threaten our lives and our well- being, taking action at the same time.

...if there is a widely shared concept of intentional action... a philosophical analysis of intentional action that is wholly unconstrained by that concept runs the risk of having nothing more than a philosophical fiction as its subject matter.

[...] endless action and reaction. Those beautifully rounded pebbles which you gather on the sand and which you hold in your hand and marvel at their exceeding smoothness, were chiseled into their varies and graceful forms by the ceaseless action of countless waves. Nature is herself a great worker and never tolerates, without certain rebuke, any contradiction to her wise example. Inaction is followed by stagnation. Stagnation is followed by pestilence and pestilence is followed by death.

A brave action is often followed by grief. Do not let my resistance to grief stop the brave action.

There is good Karma, there is bad Karma, and as the wheel of life moves on, old Karma is exhausted and again fresh Karma is accumulated... Karma is twofold, hidden and manifest, Karma is the man that is, Karma is his action. True that each action is a cause from which evolves the countless ramifications of effect in time and space... To the worldy man Karma is a stern Nemesis, to the spiritual man Karma unfolds itself in harmony with his highest aspirations.

To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion from fear of eccentricity, never to be eccentric from fear of conformity.

Can it be that action is active resignation? Something is trying to develop; it moves ever so slightly, and there comes your man of action and bashes in the hothouse windows.

If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion.

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

I was always trying, even in pure action movies, to find what was sensitive about the character more than the pure action.

I started in radio. I enjoy the mental gymnastics that go along with matching voice to picture and vice versa and trying to accent the action as opposed to provide all of the action through my words. And that's really what play-by-play is.

The problem is that affirmative action could never really get at the issue of corporate power in the workplace, and so you ended up with the downsizing; you ended up with de-industrializing. You ended up with the marginalizing of working people and working poor people even while affirmative action was taking place, and a new black middle class was expanding.

I think you can't do any action without in some way paying homage to John Woo. He's the guy who just invented that sort of next level of poetic nasty action.