Quotes About Action

Exploiting opportunities produces results.

But it is meaningless to speak of short-range and long-range plans. There are plans that lead to action today—and they are true plans, true strategic decisions. And there are plans that talk about action tomorrow—they are dreams, if not pretexts for nonthinking, nonplanning, nondoing. The

They asked, "What needs to be done?" • They asked, "What is right for the enterprise?" • They developed action plans. • They took responsibility for decisions. • They took responsibility for communicating. • They were focused on opportunities rather than problems. • They ran productive meetings. • They thought and said "we" rather than "I.

The aim of strategic planning is action now.

According to the first view, the original and fundamental function of the nervous system is to link perception with action.

In philosophical discussions of decision-making, an action is said to be instrumentally rational if it is a good way of achieving the goal that the agent is pursuing, whatever that goal might be. When assessing actions according to their instrumental rationality, we do not worry about where the goals come from or whether they are appropriate goals. We just ask whether the action is likely to achieve the outcome that the agent desires.

Pero si el cansancio es ya por si mismo la mejor acción...! No es necesario que con él se pueda dar comienzo a nada, porque de por sí él es ya un comenzar y un dar -dar comienzo, se dice en un lenguaje culto-. Su dar-comienzo es una enseñanza. El cansancio enseña, es utilizable.

Some people have to live while others get to sit this living thing out.

Talk is cheap and easy; making dreams real takes hard, humble work. Dreams in the Midwest are acceptable, just keep them to yourself. Maybe tell your family, but don't just talk—do something about it.

All life is an emergency.

We try too much and trust too little. Count the times God's Book tells us to try. Now count the times it tells us to trust.

One common cause of this mistake of preferring to imagine and admire a great ideal instead of beginning to do little deeds is our impatience with little baby steps, our lack of humility.

It's the most essential thing of all just because it's not a matter of how you do it at all, but of whether you do it. Like being born, or cooking: how you do it is less important than whether you do it. You can find thousands of books on prayer that give you methods of praying, hundreds of hows; but they do you no good at all unless you actually pray. Otherwise it's like reading a cookbook instead of cooking. You can't eat a cookbook!

It is tempting to remain in the comfortable theater of the imagination instead of the real world, to fall in love with the idea of becoming a saint and loving God and neighbor instead of doing the actual work, because the idea makes no demands on you.

the contemplative life not only does not exclude, but requires, the active life.

ora et labora, prayer and work.

There is no such thing as an involuntary sin.

First, you must read it, not as you read other books, but slowly and thoughtfully (that is why I made it very short) and above all prayerfully, that is, under the eye of God, in the presence of Truth and therefore in absolute honesty. Second, you must actually do it, not just read about doing it, think about doing it, understand how to do it, plan to do it, or imagine yourself doing it. It is a cookbook, not a dinner.

Dostoyevsky says, "love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams" (The Brothers Karamazov).

De Caussade makes this matter of duty very simple, too, as he makes everything simple: "We have two duties to fulfill: we must actively seek to carry God's will into effect and passively accept all that his will sends us" (p. 73). That's all. That's it.

The idea of resolving conflicts by killing people (which is what war is) is not a just thing, a just idea. In that sense there is no such thing as "just war". But to wage a given war may be a just action.

The changing thing begins with only the potential to change, but it needs to be acted on by other things outside if that potential is to be made actual. Otherwise it cannot change.

ninjas on steroids

a follower tells, but a leader shows.