This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Military action without politics is like a tree without a root." - Ho Chi Minh
"Right action is its own reward." - Wayne Muller
"The message of the Bhagavad Gita is that each human life has but one ultimate end and purpose: to realize the Eternal Self within and thus to know, finally and fully, the joy of union with God, the Divine Ground of Being (Brahman). Whereas such knowledge was traditionally sought in retreat from the world, the Gita, without omitting that option, teaches that it may be attained in the midst of the world through nonattached action in the context of devotion (bhakti) to God." - Philip Novak
"Even honorable motives of action, unless directed by judgment, are followed by disastrous results." - Otho, fully Marcus Salvius Otho Caesar Augustus NULL
"The basic function of a myth is always to govern present action towards future hopes." - George Sawyer Pettee
"True devotion produces as of itself a song; song, in turn excites devotion, and this reciprocal action augments the value of both, like two mirrors, which, facing each other, multiply the same image even to the profondity, so to speak, of the infinite." - Joseph Pothier, fully Dom Joseph Pothier
"Faith is verification by the heart; confession by the tongue; action by the limbs." - Sufi Proverbs
"Precisely what we need are good theories to focus our attention, a good set of ideals to guide our action, and good visions of the future to mobilize our energies." - Paul H. Ray
"Purity of motivation is the goal; constancy of action is the way" - Fritz A. Rothschild
"Women are always held responsible for the supposed evilness of sex – its’ not just Eve and Pandora. The prostitution laws are a contemporary example. Soliciting is an offence in thirty-four states, whereas customers are subject to legal action in only fourteen states. Moreover, prostitutes are jailed in virtually all states, and customers – not at all." -
"The major power facing bureaucracy is not the struggle for power but the evasion of responsibility; bureaucrats are very reluctant to take action." - Dean Rusk, fully David Dean Rusk
"This is the Noble Eightfold Path: right views, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration." - Samyutta Nikaya "Connected Discourses" or "Kindred Sayings" NULL
"The view of Reverence for Life is ethical mysticism. It allows union with the Infinite to be realized [through] ethical action." - Albert Schweitzer
"No amount of libido, or passion, no external force, and no inner prompting to sin can make the human action of man anything but free. We are never tempted beyond our strength. Every moral failure is ours alone, because our choices are our own." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
"Action does not come to a stop in its structures, it remains in action. In other words, there is much more in bodies, thins and events than is contained in their structures or material forms. All things overflow their own structural limits. The inner Action transcends the outer structure, and there is thus a trend in things beyond themselves." -
"Hunger love, vanity, and fear. There are four great motives of human action." - William Graham Sumner
"In summary, goals or end-states are not intrinsically valuable, even though they direct and explain action. Although having aims or goals is an important and unavoidable aspect of life, it is a mistake to confuse those goals with non-instrumental value because this would imply that activities are merely instrumentally valuable. It is the goals of our activities that are instrumentally valuable; they are valuable to achieve because they lead to further worthwhile activities." - Garrett Thomson
"The Nine Mistakes [about ways to think about the meaning of life]: (1) Only the infinite has meaning; the finite can only have meaning insofar as it participates in the infinite. (2) The meaning of life consists in some goal or purpose. (3) The meaning of life is happiness. (4) The meaning of life must be invented. (5) Life cannot have a meaning if the universe is entirely composed of matter, as science teaches us. (6) The sole or primary purpose of evaluations is to guide our choice of actions, and value judgments are reducible to reasons for action. (7) The meaning of a person’s life cannot extend to things beyond the boundaries of his or her mode of living. (8) A person’s life does not having meaning because only linguistic items can be meaningful. (9) The meaning of our lives consists in our living in accordance with a self-determined life-plan." - Garrett Thomson
"To do whatever is required of you in any situation without it becoming a role that you identify with is an essential lesson in the art of living that each one of us is here to learn. You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle
"A religious man is guided in his activity not by the consequences of his action, but by the consciousness of the destination of his life." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"For every action there is an equal and opposite government program." - Bob Wells, born Robert Wells, aka Hoolihan
"To understand is hard. Once one understands, action is easy." - Sun Yat-sen
"Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action." - Walter Anderson, fully Walter Truett Anderson
"Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world." - Joel A. Barker
"The willingness to take the risk of being wrong and perhaps subjected to ridicule, punishment, or loss is an outstanding trait of the creative person. Such action does not mean to behave on foolish impulse, but to calculate the risks and then to take a chance." - Frank Barron
"If [man] thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole." - David Bohm, fully David Joseph Bohm
"Compassion is something you can develop with practice. It involves two things: intention and action. Intention simply means you remember to open your heart to others; you expand what and who matters, from yourself to other people. Action is simply the "what you do about it."" - Richard Carlson
"In deciding what course of action is moral, you should act as if there were no God. You should act as if there were no threat of earthly punishment or reward. You should be a person of good character because it is right to be such a person." - Alan Morton Dershowitz
"Quite often, as life goes on, when we feel completely secure as we go on our way, we suddenly notice that we are trapped in error, that we have allowed ourselves to be taken in by individuals, by objects, have dreamt up an affinity with them which immediately vanishes before our waking eye; and yet we cannot tear ourselves away, held fast by some power that seems incomprehensible to us. Sometimes, however, we become fully aware and realize that error as well as truth can move and spur us on to action. Now because action is always a decisive factor, something really good can result from an active error, because the effect of all that has been done reaches out into infinity. So although creative action is certainly always best, destroying what has been done is also not without happy consequence." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action." - Michael Hanson
"Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn! Look to this Day! For it is Life, the very Life of Life. In its brief course lie all the Verities and Realities of your Existence. The Bliss of Growth, The Glory of Action, The Splendor of Beauty; For Yesterday is but a Dream, And To-morrow is only a Vision; But To-day well lived makes Every Yesterday a Dream of Happiness, And every Tomorrow a Vision of Hope. Look well therefore to this Day! Such is the Salutation of the Dawn!" - Kālidāsa NULL
"As Siddhartha Gautama might tell you, we've got to keep changing. Even the deepest pool stagnates without action." - Franz Metcalf
"If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day." - Alex Noble
"True forgiveness is not an action after the fact, it is an attitude with which you enter each moment." - David Ridge
"The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise. We must be willing to make an intelligent compromise with perfection lest we wait forever before taking action. It's still good advice to cross bridges as we come to them." -
"The view of Reverence for Life is ethical mysticism. It allows union with the Infinite to be realized [though] ethical action." - Albert Schweitzer
"Love is emotion that issues into action and often employs the greatest powers of creativity." - Irving Singer
"We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action." - Frank Tibolt