Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.
W. H. Auden

I begin to think, that a calm is not desirable in any situation in life. Man was made for action and for bustle too, I believe.
Abigail Adams

Active creation is conceived as a transitive action in which there is always presupposed an object about which the agent is concerned; it is virtually but not formally transitive because it makes, not presupposes, an object.
William Ames

The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
Diane Arbus

Whatever failures I have known, whatever errors I have committed, whatever follies I have witnessed in private and public life have been the consequence of action without thought.
Bernard Baruch

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

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.
Pythagoras

A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.
Elizabeth Gaskell

Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.
Sallust

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.
Hannah Arendt

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.
Tennessee Williams

If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.
Indira Gandhi

Action without a name, a who attached to it, is meaningless.
Hannah Arendt

A man of action forced into a state of thought is unhappy until he can get out of it.
John Galsworthy

We are in a period when old questions are settled and the new are not yet brought forward. Extreme party action, if continued in such a time, would ruin the party. Moderation is its only chance. The party out of power gains by all partisan conduct of those in power.
Rutherford B. Hayes

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.
John Cusack

Bipartisanship is nice, but it cannot be a substitute for action, not having it cannot prevent us from going forward.
Nancy Pelosi

In conversion you are not attached primarily to an order, nor to an institution, nor a movement, nor a set of beliefs, nor a code of action - you are attached primarily to a Person, and secondarily to these other things.
E. Stanley Jones

The action carries a sense of incompleteness and frustration, but not of guilt. Victorious living does not mean perfect living in the sense of living without flaw, but it does mean adequate living, and that can be consistent with many mistakes.
E. Stanley Jones

Our intentions may be very good, but, because the intelligence is limited, the action may turn out to be a mistake - a mistake, but not necessarily a sin, for sin comes out of a wrong intention.
E. Stanley Jones