Quotes About Action

Most investors want to do today what they should have done yesterday.

Every choice we make can be a celebration of the world we want.

Survival is not about being fearless. It's about making a decision, getting on and doing it, because I want to see my kids again, or whatever the reason might be.

Someday' is a disease that will take your dreams to the grave with you.… If it's important to you and you want to do it 'eventually,' just do it and correct course along the way.

Whatever you have a passion for, then you must do. If you want to write, write about something you know about.

It takes committed, high energy, full-tilt boogie participation to have the kind of life you want.

The time for arguing about the powers the people want is over. It's time now to use the powers that we have.

If I want something, I go get it. Anything that I believe will stop me, I question.

You can choose to die. You can choose to run... but dying alone won't change a thing. Trust me on that one. If you really want things to change... you're going to have to live.

I get a lot of letters from people. They say "I want to be a writer. What should I do?" I tell them to stop writing to me and to get on with it.

MOTHER TERESA: Boy, one must participate in one's own salvation. In order to hear, one must be willing to listen.

God asks today's Christian wives this question: "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord' and not do what I say?" (Luke 6:46). As

The answer is the answer to so many of our questions about how best to act in an emotionally tense situation: Withdraw from the conflict.

17So you see, faith by itself isn't enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.

17Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.

In order to recover we must follow the example of this woman. We cannot afford to stand back, hoping for "cures," and avoid deliberate action because of our lack of faith. We may have lived with our condition for many years, spending our resources on promising "cures" without success. When we can come to believe in God, a power greater than ourself, and have the faith to take hold of our own recovery, we will find the healing power we have been looking for.

Instead of asking "What is the 'right' or 'wrong' thing to do?" the practitioner asks, "What is the wisest and most compassionate thing to do?

Agnosticism is no excuse for indecision. If anything, it is a catalyst for action; for in shifting concern away from a future life and back to the present, it demands an ethics of empathy rather than a metaphysics of fear and hope.

In a matrix structure of the kind prevalent today, thinking two levels up also has the benefit of helping to resolve the dilemmas the matrix naturally creates. The "next level up" may well be ambiguous. Two bosses might point in different directions. Understanding the level above them generally resolves the issue and allows action.

There are many reasons why people might only go through the motions. Two of the most common are that they do not believe a course of action is feasible or that they do not believe it makes sense.

History was always present for Churchill. He understood, perhaps, that the essence of history is the present, for the present is nothing other than what the past has made it, only those most essential elements of the past being retained in the present. That is what makes them essential. One's understanding of the past is therefore a constituent part of one's understanding of current events and a guide as to how to act in it.

The big issue was not strategy but executing strategy. There was plenty of activity, but not much action.

it is these miracles of execution," Clausewitz writes, "that we should really admire."9 The fact is that in war "things do not happen of their own accord like a well-oiled machine, indeed the machine itself starts to create resistance, and overcoming it demands enormous willpower on the part of the leader."10 In war, "everything is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult… taking action in war is movement in a resistant medium."11

There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.