Action is the real measure of intelligence.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

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

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.

I believe life is an intelligent thing: that things aren’t random.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Knowledge and human power are synonymous.

Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

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.

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

Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.

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

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.

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.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

You must take action now that will move you towards your goals. Develop a sense of urgency in your life.

It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.

Never mistake motion for action.

I’m a meathead. I can’t help it, man. You’ve got smart people and you’ve got dumb people.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

Never confuse motion with action.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Action expresses priorities.

It is a no-fail, incontrovertible reality: If you get, give. If you learn, teach. You can’t do anything with that except do it.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

No sooner said than done – so acts your man of worth.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

A woman uses her intelligence to find reasons to support her intuition.

Narrative is linear, but action has breadth and depth as well as height and is solid.

When Rumsfeld gets up on television and says we have definitive intelligence that al Qaeda is working with Iraq, how is an ordinary citizen supposed to react? They won’t tell you the evidence, and when anyone asks, they say, ‚Well, you know: It’s secret.‘

I wasn’t very good in academics, but I could have been if I could have studied well. I was a smart kid.

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

The right man is the one who seizes the moment.

I think it’s a myth that American public or any other public is so stupid that they need to be constantly pricked.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

The time is always right to do what is right.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

Look, the American people are smart.

Meditation is not to avoid society; it is to look deep to have the kind of insight you need to take action. To think that it is just to sit down and enjoy the calm and peace, is wrong.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

What you don’t do can be a destructive force.

Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

There is no sin except stupidity.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.