Quotes about Action

The instinctive preference was to read rather than to act. No wonder our actual lives were more or less a shambles

Clearly, mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible form of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations.

Every act has both good and evil results. Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, toward the harmonious relationships that come from compassion with suffering, from understanding the other person.

Now you can see today why the world is in trouble. What is the social field today? The social field is the planet, and there isn't a single system of action that has to do with the planet. They all have to do with one interest group or another.

So perhaps the best thing to do is to stop writing Introductions and get on with the book.

Whatever Fortune brings, Don't be afraid of doing things.

Democracy is not something you believe in or hang your hat on, but something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls. If you participate, the future is yours.

Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power...Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.

God created hand, head, and heart; the hand for the deed, the head for the world, the heart for mysticism.

It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or the bullet. If you're afraid to use an expression like that, you should get back in the cotton patch, you should get back in the alley.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can survive.