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 time is always right to do what is right.

What I’m asking for is hard. It’s easier to be cynical; to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future.

Today, India is a nuclear weapons state.

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.

Personal success or personal satisfaction are not worth another thought if one does achieve them, or worth worrying about if they evade one or are slow in coming. All that is really worth while is action – faithful action, for the world, and in God.

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

Convictions, in the end, they can be dangerous, but a world without them is just kind of an awful kind of gray, amorphous mass.

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.

Without education we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.

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.

In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

The ancestor of every action is a thought.

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.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.

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

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

There is poison in the fang of the serpent, in the mouth of the fly and in the sting of a scorpion; but the wicked man is saturated with it.

Never confuse motion with action.

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

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

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

The danger sensation is exciting. The challenge is to find new dangers.

Action is the real measure of intelligence.

You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.

Primate and elephant and even pig societies show considerable evidence of care for others, parent-child bonding, solidarity in the face of danger, and so on.

The nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master and deserves one.

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.

The purposes of the United States should not be doubted. The Security Council resolutions will be enforced – the just demands of peace and security will be met – or action will be unavoidable. And a regime that has lost its legitimacy will also lose its power.

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

Although September 11 was horrible, it didn’t threaten the survival of the human race, like nuclear weapons do.

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

Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is.

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

One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

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

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

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.

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

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!

If you like a person you say ‚let’s go into business together.‘ Man is a social animal after all, but such partnerships are fraught with danger.

The most effective way to do it, is to do it.

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

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

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

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

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

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.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Never mistake motion for action.

India can live without nuclear weapons. That’s our dream, and it should be the dream of the U.S. also.

My old drama coach used to say, ‚Don’t just do something, stand there.‘ Gary Cooper wasn’t afraid to do nothing.

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

I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace: to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.