Quotes About Action

If you wish to have children, please do something for the world you will bring them into. That will make you someone who works for peace, in one way or another.

When people say, "Don't just sit there, do something," they're urging you to act. But if the quality of your being is poor—if you don't have enough peace, understanding, and equanimity, if you still have a lot of anger and worries—then your actions will also be poor.

Compassion is not an idea or something we can imagine. It is a mental formation that has an immediate result in action of body, speech, or mind. It is rooted in understanding. When we understand why we suffer we can be compassionate to ourselves. When we understand how others suffer then we can be compassionate to them.

Whoever moves from carelessness to vigilance, whoever overcomes his unwholesome deeds with wholesome actions, lights up the world, like the moon that merges from a cloud.

Someone may be able to speak beautifully about compassion, wisdom, or nonself, but this doesn't necessarily help others. And the speaker may still have a big self or treat others badly. His eloquent speech may be only empty words. We can get tired of all these words, even the word "Buddha.

Unwholesome action, hurting self, comes easily. Wholesome action, healing self, takes effort.

Whoever neglects doing good is inviting addiction to evil.

You have feet, and if you don't make use of them it's a loss and a waste. Someone is telling you now so that in the future you cannot say: "No one told me that it was important to enjoy using my feet.

Our message is first and foremost a nonverbal one; our message is our own action.

Just as rust produced by iron corrodes iron, so is the violator of moral law destroyed by his own wrong action.

The past closer, more comparable, a way to justify present action.

The most important move consists of my putting down my resistance and beginning to act in the way I want the other person to act.

in order to really possess knowledge, whatever it may be, you must put it into practice, that is, master your nature so as to be able to express this knowledge in action. ... You are still very young, but you must learn right away that to reach the goal you must know how to pay the price, and that to understand the supreme truths you must put them into practice in your daily life. That's all.

Write it however you want to, but start writing!

It was the first moment I chose courage over fear, and I have always made the same choice since.

Feeling good about yourself is not the same thing as doing good. Good policy is more important than good feelings.

Thus in life there is ever the intellectual and the emotional nature—the mind that reasons, and the mind that feels. Of one come the men of action—generals and statesmen; of the other, the poets and dreamers—artists all.

So when it happens, don't just say Damn and forget it. Stop a minute and think it through. Somebody's going to change the face of the earth and it could be you. 'It Was Nothing -- Really!', 1969

Compassion is a verb.

Being vegetarian here also means that we do not consume dairy and egg products, because they are products of the meat industry. If we stop consuming, they will stop producing. Only collective awakening can create enough determination for action.

We will not just say, I love him very much, but instead, I will do something so that he will suffer less. The mind of compassion is truly present when it is effective in removing another person's suffering.

Sometimes it is better not to talk about art by using the word art. If we just act with awareness and integrity, our art will flower, and we don't have to talk about it at all.

You have to learn how to help a wounded child while still practicing mindful breathing. You should not allow yourself to get lost in action. Action should be meditation at the same time.

Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late.