Quotes about Action

To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.

To wish to act like angels while we are still in this world is nothing but folly.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment and learn again to exercise ... his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals.

Now is the only time we own; give, love, toil with a will. And place no faith in tomorrow, for the clock may then be still.

We steal if we touch tomorrow. It is God's.

Great thoughts reduced to practice become great acts.

One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside of prison is their sense of futility. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment.

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

Worry never climbed a hill, worry never paid a bill, Worry never dried a tear, worry never calmed a fear, Worry never darned a heel, worry never cooked a meal, It never led a horse to water, nor ever did a thing it "oughter."

What is today a matter of academic speculation begins tomorrow to move armies and pull down empires.

The spiritual leader will not procrastinate when faced with a decision, nor vacillate after making it. A sincere but faulty decision is better than weak-willed trial balloons or indecisive overtures. To postpone decision is really to decide for the status quo. In most decisions the key element is not so much knowing what to do but in living with the results.

Courageous leaders face unpleasant and even devastating situations with equanimity, then act firmly to bring good from trouble, even if their action is unpopular. Leadership always faces natural human inertia and opposition. But courage follows through with a task until it is done.