I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie.

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

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

Never mistake motion for action.

‚Unforgiven‘ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‚This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.‘ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

When people protest and are upset with a movie, it becomes a big hit. They hated Passion of The Christ, it worked out pretty well for the box office. So let’s get that going.

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

Justice is truth in action.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

One of the great pleasures of going to see a Daniel Day-Lewis film: you haven’t seen him in five years. Where have you been? So, it’s a special event, right? Well, if you want to go see a movie that I’m in, it still may be a special event for you, but, you don’t feel like you don’t know where I’ve been.

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

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

We are not going to be satisfied by politicians saying ‚we support you‘ and then walking away. We won’t be satisfied until they meet our demands and act. That’s why simply taking a selfie or posting support on Twitter isn’t enough. That’s why we have to keep striking.

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

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don’t have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don’t pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.

Growing up I didn’t watch movies.

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

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

People say that I’m a boxer. I actually started with kick boxing, and then I moved onto boxing, and then I moved onto grappling.

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

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

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him.

When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.

It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

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

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

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

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.

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow.

Action is character.

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‘.

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.

I want to be an expert in different fighting styles, new training methods, new ways of thinking.

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.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

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.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn’t a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.

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.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

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.

I love good film, whether it’s an independent or studio film. The independent films, I think the good ones aren’t necessarily eccentric ones but they’re the more specific ones.

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

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.

Jiu Jitsu is probably the No. 1 activity that I could recommend to someone to improve their lives overall.

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.

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad… he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

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!

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