Quotes About Action

Thinkers prepare the revolution; bandits carry it out.

Whatever little we have gained, we have gained by agitation, while we have uniformly lost by moderation.

Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.

By gnawing through a dyke, even a rat may drown a nation.

Do you know that disease and death must needs overtake us, no matter what we are doing? ... What do you wish to be doing when it overtakes you?... If you have anything better to be doing when you are so overtaken, get to work on that.

Do what thy manhood bids thee do.

Go ahead and do it. It's much easier to apologize after something's been done than to get permission ahead of time.

Criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.

Genius does what it must, talent does what it can.

I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

What really matters is what you do with what you have.

We don't know who we are until we see what we can do.

This nation was built by men who took risks-pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.

Danger itself is the best remedy for danger.

Doing is a quantum leap from imagining.

Don't be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated. You can't cross a chasm in two small steps.

The follies which a man regrets most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.

The only things you regret are the things you don't do.

The defense force inside of us wants us to be cautious, to stay away from anything as intense as a new kind of action. Its job is to protect us, and it categorically avoids anything resembling danger. But it's often wrong.

We fail far more often by timidity than by over-daring.

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

Risk! Risk anything! ... Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.

We can only do what is possible for us to do. But still it is good to know what the impossible is.