Quotes About Action

First rule of restorations. Never do what you can't undo.

the world won't come to me,' he used to say, 'so I must go to it'—

No siempre se saca el bien de las buenas obras ni el mal de las malas obras. Ni siquiera los sabios y los buenos pueden ver la finalidad de todas sus acciones.

I supposed that when anyone accustomed to working with the mind is faced with a straightforward action, there's a tendency to embellish, to make it overly clever. On paper there's a certain symmetry. Now that I'm faced with the prospect of executing it I realize how hideously complicated it is.

It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did.

Walk your talk.

Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.

It was Andrew Jackson's motto, he reminded, that "if you temporize, you are lost.

After a quarter of a century in politics, Roosevelt observed, he had found that change was realized by "men who take the next step; not those who theorize about the 200th step.

According to his habit, Theodore Roosevelt sought to harness anxiety through action.

when I make up my mind to do a thing, I act.

Johnson saw preoccupation with principle and procedure as a sign of impotence. Such men were "troublemakers," more concerned with appearing forceful than in exercising the real strengths that led to tangible achievement.

The politician, Johnson's experience had taught him, could make promises without keeping them; words spoken in public had little relation to the practical conduct of daily life. But whatever justification a politician may claim for deceptions, the statesman must align his words with his action.

Don't hit till you have to, but, when you do hit, hit hard.

As Roosevelt figured out details of his radical plan, he pressed ahead on two less extreme fronts. "It is never well to take drastic action," he liked to say, "if the result can be achieved with equal efficiency in less drastic fashion.

The majority of the great fortunes were "won not by doing evil, but as an incident to action which has benefited the community as a whole.

A finely developed sense of timing—knowing when to wait and when to act—would remain in Lincoln's repertoire of leadership skills the rest of his life.

Roosevelt's leadership style was, in actuality, governed by just such a series of simple dictums and aphorisms: Hit the ground running; consolidate control; ask questions of everyone wherever you go; manage by wandering around; determine the basic problems of each organization and hit them head-on; when attacked, counterattack; stick to your guns; spend your political capital to reach your goals; and then when your work is stymied or done, find a way out.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are

I have always had a horror of words that are not translated into deeds," Roosevelt frequently charged.

This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are *equipped.* Up there, there's a layer of people who run everything. But we -- we're just peasants. We don't understand what's going on, and we can't do anything. ...You, running about playing at revolutions, playing little games, thinking you're important. You're just peasants, you'll never *do* anything.

I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself. That was all part of deciding to live, though I didn't know it.

I hope the string and clapper arrangement he calls a mind has been permanently put out of action.

I could not have done that. I fear nothing and no one. I respect nothing and no one. But I could not have done that.' 'You have done it,' Jerott said. 'It is easy to do it, out of hatred. But you are right. I know of no one else on earth who could have done it out of love.