Quotes About Action

To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. SØREN KIERKEGAARD

Forget mistakes, forget failures, forget everything, except what you're going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day. WILL DURANT

The past is over, the future hasn't happened yet, the only time is right now. This can be your threshold moment of change. The next year of your life is going to go by whether you're doing something about your weight or not. Now

When you choose the behaviour, you choose the consequence.

I feel the hot winds of karma driving me.

She makes life over, he realized. She controls life, whereas I just sit on my can and let it happen to me.

Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.

Listen, I'm not an intellectual—Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed. Theory derives from action. What our corporate state demands from us is comprehension of the social forces—of history.

It sounds like they're saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That's a contradiction.

Entering the phone booth, he did a phone thing.

Okay, he said to himself. Here goes.

Non siete contenti di non vivere in un romanzo di fantascienza, dove ogni azione ha uno scopo ed è coerente, e in un cui il caso non agisce? La capillare sensazione che abbiamo di un universo senza senso è forse ciò che sostiene le nostre vite.

Like an existentialist, I will infer my state from the actions I perform. Thought follows deed, as Mussolini taught. In Anfang war die Tat, as Goethe says in Faust. In the beginning was the deed, not the word.

Sometimes one must try anything, he decided. It is no disgrace. On the contrary, it is a sign of wisdom, of recognizing the situation.

Men of thought, Anita said. Not men of action. It's begun to have a paralyzing effect.

Could it be that I have bad breath, Tom? Well, Ed, if you're worried about that, try today's new Ubik, with powerful germicidal foaming action, guaranteed safe when taken as directed.

I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It's very strange how often strong feelings don't seem to carry any message of action.

And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone or that's an evil one because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair...death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...

But you cannot change what you are, only what you do.

If you wanted to divert a mighty river into a different course, and all you had was a single pebble, you could do it, as long as you put the pebble in the right place to send the first trickle of water that way instead of this.

Seems to me the place to fight cruelty is where you find it, and the place you give help is where you see it needed.

But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.

When you stopped believing in God, he went on, did you stop believing in good and evil? No. But I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are. All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them. People are too complicated to have simple labels.