Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

I have no human feelings.

Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. Necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation. Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything or creating anything. Period. If you ain’t desperate at some point, you ain’t interesting.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

A categorical imperative would be one which represented an action as objectively necessary in itself, without reference to any other purpose.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

We must not sit still and look for miracles; up and doing, and the Lord will be with thee. Prayer and pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, will do anything.

Our faith is released as we say, pray and do the Word.

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

You can’t think; you just gotta do things.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

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

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.

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

We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

To learn something but not to do is really not to learn. To know something but not to do is really not to know.

Everywhere in life, the true question is not what we gain, but what we do.

I think humans are just hard-wired to process people’s faces and understand meaning and expression at such a more granular level than other types of communication.

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.

The computer brings out the worst in some people.

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do.

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.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

I want to use my position of leadership to help move along at a faster pace what I believe and know the Obama administration wants to do around the urgency of climate change.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

In any court-like environment of power, you will inevitably find people who are drawn to those who are successful or powerful, not out of admiration, but out of secret envy.

People need motivation to do anything. I don’t think human beings learn anything without desperation.

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

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.

The effects of climate change are real and must be acted on.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

Effective action is always unjust.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

It seems to me that terrestrial beings, as they become more autonomous, psychologically richer, shut themselves up in a way against one another, and at the same time gradually become strangers to the cosmic environment and currents, impenetrable to one another, and incapable of exteriorizing themselves.

You can’t try to do things; you simply must do them.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.

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.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.