Quotes About Action

[Action's] a Western thing. We think of the hero going into battle, rebelling against a government or an oppressor, but [in KUNDUN] action is nonaction or what appears to be nonaction. That's a hard concept for Western audiences. . . . We wanted to show a kind of moral action, a spiritual action, an emotional action. Some people will pick up on it; some won't.

There ought not be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a politcal and moral action.

Not every action requires military action. As a matter of fact, military action is the very last resort for us.

Well I liked the mixture actually. It's really good fun to have throughout a shoot to move from something which is quite character based in certain scenes where there's very little action and you're just working with actors and I suppose I've had quite a lot of practice at that. This is more action than I've had a chance to do so that was fun for me too to go into the action then and have some really good crew working with me. And sometimes you get these scenes where they blend.

Prayer and action...can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation.

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'.

Altruism declares that any action taken for the benefit of others is good, and any action taken for one's own benefit is evil. Thus the beneficiary of an action is the only criterion of moral value - and so long as that beneficiary is anybody other than oneself, anything goes.

The action is what makes the dreams come true. Always do your best. The dream that you have becomes real when you take the action. If you dont take the action whatever is in your head ... will dissolve and you will forget about it

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.

(there is) no other means of escaping from one's consciousness than to deny it, to look upon it as an organic disease of the terrestrial intelligence - a disease which we must endeavor to cure by an action which must appear to us an action of violent and willful madness, but which, on the other side of our appearances, is probably an action of health. ("Of Immortality")

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.

Action film is really easy to do, you just get in a car and smash through things and it's called action. The real key is what happens between the action when it's quiet. Loud is easy. Quiet, real hard.

Thinking is progress. Non-thinking is stagnation of the individual, organisation and the country. Thinking leads to action. Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action, converts adversity into prosperity.

Want to know the secret behind The Secret? The Law of Attraction will not bring you abundance and prosperity for just thinking pleasant, positive thoughts. It is no cosmic mistake that the word "attraction" has the word "action" in it. Abundance is, in fact, the result of creative thinking and a lot of action. Much action, much prosperity, in other words. What are you waiting for?

Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.

Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites that has not yet been achieved in reality...Preferences tend to attack one form of discrimination with another...Affirmative action encourages a victim-focused identity, and sends the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements.

Understand that all emotions serve you. Those you once thought of as negative emotions are merely calls to action. For example, if you feel frustrated it means that you believe things could be better, and they're not. This is a call to action telling you there's something you must do to make this better now. This "negative" emotion is actually a gift if you use it effectively.

Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action. Their acquisition obligates each man in some way to change his life, even if it is only his inner life. They demand to be stood for. They dictate where a man must concentrate his vision. They determine his moral and intellectual priorities. They provide him with allies and make him enemies. In short, ideas impose an interest in their ultimate fate which goes far beyond the realm of the merely reasonable.

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.

All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.

Behind every problem, there is a question trying to ask itself... Behind every question there is an answer trying to reveal itself. Behind every answer there is an action trying to take place. And behind every action there is a way of life trying to be born.

Love cannot remain by itself - it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action and that action is service.

As usual, it occurred to me that words were the only thing that could possibly save me from this situation. This was a characteristic misunderstanding on my part. When action was needed, I was absorbed in words; for words proceeded with such difficulty from my mouth that I was intent on them and forgot all about action. It seemed to me that actions, which are dazzling, varied things, must always be accompanied by equally dazzling and equally varied words.

Abraham: You did not come into this environment to create through action. Instead, your action is meant to be a way in which you enjoy what you have created through thought.

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.

You don't want to have to chase the action. Get yourself in the right place and the action comes to you.

One can only learn his powers of action by action, and his powers of thought by thinking

All of us realize that war requires action. What is sometimes harder for us to realize is that peace and neutrality also require action.

What brings the karmic result from the patterns of our actions is not our action alone. As we intend and then act, we create [our] karma: so another key to understanding the creation of karma is becoming aware of intention. The heart is our garden, and along with each action there is an intention that is planted like a seed. The result of the patterns of our karma is the fruit of these seeds.

Authors of so-called 'literary' fiction insist that action, like plot, is vulgar and unworthy of a true artist. Don't pay any attention to misguided advice of that sort. If you do, you will very likely starve trying to live on your writing income. Besides, the only writers who survive the ages are those who understand the need for action in a novel.

Eliminate the word HATE and replace it with LOVE. The words: hate, hatred, hating, haters, hate that, hate this...and so forth. Stop people when they say them. Stop people from expressing any of those words in action. Make the word HATE as old as GROOVY. The word LOVE has been proven to be the most beautiful word. Learn to use it and put it into action - any which way you can.

The practical revolutionary will understand Goethe's 'conscience is the virtue of observers and not of agents of action'; in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one's individual conscience and the good of mankind.

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

Basically, managing is about influencing action. Managing is about helping organizations and units to get things done, which means action. Sometimes, managers manage actions directly. They fight fires. They manage projects. They negotiate contracts.

Fulfillment is structured in achievement, Achievement is structured in action, Action is structured in thinking, Thinking is structured in knowledge, Knowledge is structured in consciousness

But our energy woes are in many ways the result of classic market failures that can only be addressed through collective action, and government is the vehicle for collective action in a democracy.

Very few people make exterior movies anymore. It's always action films driven by action and quick editing.

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clearsighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

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.

Reflection doesn't take anything away from decisiveness, from being a person of action. In fact, it generates the inner toughness that you need to be an effective person of action - to be a leader.

There are lots of guns and action in my drawings, and part of that is just to make them more interesting. Because you can go through a whole film and it's mostly talking heads and little else until the action scenes, and they're usually violence or physical stuff. Same with baseball, or any sport. Except I find pitching and batting are visually very striking.

I prefer that animation reach into places where live action doesn't go, and it seems like all of animation nowadays is trying to go where live action is.

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.

[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.

The life of man is made up of action and endurance; the life is fruitful in the ratio in which it is laid out in noble action or in patient perseverance.

The drug problem is in the United States, not in Mexico. It's a demand problem and that is to be dealt with here, and it is not being dealt with. It's been shown over and over that prevention and treatment are far more cost effective than police action, out-of-country action, border control, and so on.

Thought precedes action, action does not always precede thought.