Quotes About Action

a book by David K. Reynolds, who had, in the early 1980s, come up with a system he called Constructive Living, a Western combination of two different kinds of Japanese psychotherapies, one based on getting people to stop using feelings as an excuse for their actions and the other based on getting people to practice gratitude.

I don't want to hope anymore. I don't think we should hope anymore. We hoped enough. Now we have to do. We all have to do now.

Resolution is almost omnipotent. Those little words "try" and "begin" are sometimes great in their results. "I can't" never accomplished anything. "I will try" has achieved wonders.

Politicians become statesmen, not by honoring pious shibboleths, nor even by moving [people] to action with inspiring rhetoric, but by recognizing and then resolving the central dilemmas of their age.

Paradox begets paradox; and we could scarcely have a wilder paradox than the assertion that none but a magnanimous man can act magnanimity, and that lovers alone can do justice to a love-scene.

Deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character.

Another fresh new year is here . . . Another year to live! To banish worry, doubt, and fear, To love and laugh and give! This bright new year is given me To live each day with zest . . . To daily grow and try to be My highest and my best! I have the opportunity Once more to right some wrongs, To pray for peace, to plant a tree, And sing more joyful songs!î

Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Indeed, when we awaken in the morning, rather than lazily lying in bed, we should tell ourselves that we must get up to do the proper work of man, the work we were created to perform.6

Theodore Roosevelt offered this bit of Stoic-inspired advice: "Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.

Marcus Aurelius: "Nothing is worth doing pointlessly.")

When the number of options available is limited, it is foolish to fuss and fret. We should instead simply choose the best of them and get on with life. To behave otherwise

The Stoics, for example, did not sit around apathetically, resigned to whatever the future held in store; to the contrary, they spent their days working to affect the outcome of future events.

In a full-fledged case of desire, by way of contrast, a creature is able to form a mental representation of the thing it desires, compare the current state [sic] with the desired state, and initiate action to diminish these states. Only a creature with considerable brainpower will have these abilities.

In the words of Libet, "The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act!

Psychologist Daniel M. Wegner has gone so far as to argue that conscious will is an illusion—that despite appearances, what causes my finger to rise is not my consciously willing that it rise but something else.

There is little use in preaching the love of God in words without showing the love of God in action.

The State in organising security should not stifle incentive, opportunity, responsibility; in establishing a national minimum, it should leave room and encouragement for voluntary action by each individual to provide more than that minimum for himself and his family.

Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.

Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.

The National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against states not in love with US foreign policy, is Washington's foremost non-military tool for effecting regime change.

I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.

What is the problem? What is the situation that requires this change to solve it? Who says so, and on what evidence? What would occur if no one acted to solve this problem? And what would happen to us if that occurred?

Don't just talk about the endings—create actions or activities that dramatize them.