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.

Ideas have a short shelf life. You must act on them before the expiration date.

A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.

The sons of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory.

To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

To destroy is always the first step in any creation.

I’m speaking for all of us. I’m the spokesman for a generation.

The original reason to start the project, which was that the Germans were a danger, started me off on a process of action, which was to try to develop this first system at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, to try to make the bomb work.

I just think overall there’s not as many female ministers than there are male ministers.

Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around.

All an agent is going to do is buy things for a player, damage his eligibility, and make the player dependent on them.

When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways – either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength. Thanks to the teachings of Buddha, I have been able to take this second way.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, ‚Why god? Why me?‘ and the thundering voice of God answered, ‚There’s just something about you that pisses me off.‘

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

I’m just blessed, man, to be able to represent solidarity with the small schools I went to.

I have a wish. It as a fear as well – that in my end will be my beginning.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

The squandering of oil and gas is associated with one of the greatest tragedies, not in the least resolved, which is suffered by humankind: climate change.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

I have a love interest in every one of my films: a gun.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

I couldn’t help but be impressed by the magnitude of the earthquake.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I’d have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

I just felt that if I went into Speed 2, I just… wouldn’t have come up out of the water.

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

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.

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.

Well done is better than well said.

Human beings must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Here’s the thing. We do a movie with a predominantly black cast, and it’s put in a category of being a black film. When other movies are done with a predominantly white cast, we don’t call them a white film. I’m trying to remove the stigma off things they call black films.

The key is to vote because we need a vote to put the people in power that we want to represent us.

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

I speak directly to the people, and I know that the people of California want to have better leadership. They want to have great leadership. They want to have somebody that will represent them. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican, young or old.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

Act, and God will act.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful. To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy.