Quotes About Action

If you don't like the scene you're in, if you're unhappy, if you're lonely, if you don't feel that things are happening, change your scene. Paint a new backdrop.

Don't spend your precious time asking "Why isn't the world a better place?" It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer.

You don't save a pitcher for tomorrow. Tomorrow it may rain.

Incluso en el amor humano, el sentimentalismo no es una buena medida del amor. Un hombre puede derramar lágrimas leyendo una carta de su esposa y, a renglón seguido, serle infiel con una desconocida. Lo que de verdad prueba el amor que tenemos a una persona es lo que somos capaces de hacer por ella, no nuestro sentimentalismo.

He [Platon Karataev] did not understand, and could not grasp the significance of words taken apart from the sentence. Every word and every action of his was the expression of a force uncomprehended by him, which was his life.

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom.

Why does an apple fall when it is ripe? Is it brought down by the force of gravity? Is it because its stalk withers? Because it is dried by the sun, because it grows too heavy, or because the boy standing under the tree wants to eat it? None of these is the cause.... Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own freewill is in the historical sense not free at all but is bound up with the whole course of history and preordained from all eternity.

Each man lives for himself, uses his freedom to achieve his personal goals, and feels with his whole being that right now he can or cannot do such-and-such an action; but as soon as he does it, this action, committed at a certain moment in time, becomes irreversible, and makes itself the property of history, in which is has not a free but a predestined significance.

the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything.

A man's every action is inevitably conditioned by what surrounds him and by his own body.

but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.

My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!

Ahora por favor.

HOLYCOWIT'S JEANNEYOUCANDOTHISRAFEJUSTSTAY COOLANDDON'TDOANYTHINGSTUPID!

For the first time it was up to me to do some real hunting instead of waiting and reacting to what other people chose to do.

Al actuar y ser como eres ahora, estás determinando la forma de ser y actuar de los demás.

Good. That is what we do here.

The best way to predict the future is to create it. You do that by study.

With the Great Detective to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.

Third: Act first, explain later. Stamp this axiom on your writer's brain. Or put it on a note and tape it where you can see it. This advice never fails.

All that's left for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

Katniss Everdeen did not think she was good enough to win the Hunger Games. But she had no choice. The writing game is an arena and once you're in, don't waste precious time worrying about how good you are. Gather your weapons and supplies, and fight.

There are more worlds than one, and in many ways they are unlike each other. But joy and sorrow, or, in other words, good and evil,are not absent in their degree from any of the worlds, for wherever there is life there is action, and action is but the expression of one or other of these qualities.