60+ Inspiring Action Quotes to Motivate Change and Achieve Success
Action is the bridge between intention and reality, transforming ideas and dreams into tangible outcomes. It reflects courage, determination, and the willingness to embrace risk in pursuit of progress. Action drives change, inspires others, and creates momentum for growth and innovation. Even small steps forward carry the power to reshape lives and communities. By choosing action over hesitation, we turn possibilities into achievements and pave the way for a more purposeful and fulfilling journey.
- “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.”
- “We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.”
- “All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man’s actions.”
- “Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.”
- “Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.”
- “Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.”
- “Weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end.”
- “Every action needs to be prompted by a motive.”
- “Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.”
- “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
- “The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”
- “A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.”
- “The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.”
- “We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.”
- “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”
- “A tragedy is a representation of an action that is whole and complete and of a certain magnitude. A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end.”
- “In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.”
- “All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.”
- “What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.”
- “The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.”
- “Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.”
- “We’re going to be able to ask our computers to monitor things for us, and when certain conditions happen, are triggered, the computers will take certain actions and inform us after the fact.”
- “What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.”
- “Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.”
- “Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.”
- “The law condemns and punishes only actions within certain definite and narrow limits; it thereby justifies, in a way, all similar actions that lie outside those limits.”
- “My tastes are aristocratic, my actions democratic.”
- “It is most pleasant to commit a just action which is disagreeable to someone whom one does not like.”
- “Many great actions are committed in small struggles.”
- “Thought is more than a right – it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man himself. To speak, to write, to publish, are things, so far as the right is concerned, absolutely identical. They are the ever-enlarging circles of intelligence in action; they are the sonorous waves of thought.”
- “Verse in itself does not constitute poetry. Verse is only an elegant vestment for a beautiful form. Poetry can express itself in prose, but it does so more perfectly under the grace and majesty of verse. It is poetry of soul that inspires noble sentiments and noble actions as well as noble writings.”
- “Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong – these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”
- “I never worry about action, but only inaction.”
- “Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.”
- “Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.”
- “Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.”
- “The great end of life is not knowledge but action.”
- “Of all that is good, sublimity is supreme. Succeeding is the coming together of all that is beautiful. Furtherance is the agreement of all that is just. Perseverance is the foundation of all actions.”
- “All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.”
- “It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.”
- “It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.”
- “The first step towards vice is to shroud innocent actions in mystery, and whoever likes to conceal something sooner or later has reason to conceal it.”
- “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.”
- “The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.”
- “Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.”
- “People must have righteous principles in the first, and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.”
- “Action is the foundational key to all success.”
- “A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives – of approving of some and disapproving of others.”
- “Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.”
- “A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.”
- “So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.”
- “May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.”
- “I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
- “The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.”
- “Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.”
- “Never mistake motion for action.”
- “Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.”
- “Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people’s actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself.”
- “All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.”
- “It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.”
- “There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.”
- “How easy it is to govern when one follows a system of consulting the will of the people and one holds as the only norm all the actions which contribute to the well-being of the people.”
- “I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.”
- “We should seek the greatest value of our action.”
- “I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.”
- “We are in a far better position to observe instincts in animals or in primitives than in ourselves. This is due to the fact that we have grown accustomed to scrutinizing our own actions and to seeking rational explanations for them.”
- “Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”
- “Action expresses priorities.”
- “Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.”