When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

The chief condition on which, life, health and vigor depend on, is action. It is by action that an organism develops its faculties, increases its energy, and attains the fulfillment of its destiny.

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

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.

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.

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.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

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

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.

When I first saw a picture of the crucifixion, I lost respect for my parents. I suddenly realised that this is what the adult world is like – full of cruelty and hypocrisy.

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.

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

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

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

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

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 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.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

‚Speed‘ and ‚Point Break‘ were a lot of running and jumping, and then ‚The Matrix Trilogy‘ had a lot of fights and wire work and green screen elements.

Well done is better than well said.

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

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

When my first semester grades came out, my mom and dad told me I wouldn’t be playing football.

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

I knew I was blessed with a gift of having both parents.

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

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Commitment is an act, not a word.

I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, ‚What should I do?‘ And I say: ‚Act. Do something.‘ Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.

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

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

Because of my parents‘ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia – first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

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

You see, idealism detached from action is just a dream. But idealism allied with pragmatism, with rolling up your sleeves and making the world bend a bit, is very exciting. It’s very real. It’s very strong.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

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

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

Act, and God will act.

Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

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