“These men are all talk; What is needed is action”
action!
Remarks at the New England Anti-Slavery Convention (May 1859), quoted in William Lloyd Garrison by Wendell and Francis Garrison.
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John Brown (abolitionist) 14
American abolitionist 1800–1859Related quotes
“What I do for a living is talk. What I do for life is action.”
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 140
“What is needed now is action, not hopelessness”
From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM
The Efficacy of Prayer (1958)
Context: Petitionary prayer is, nonetheless, both allowed and commanded to us: “Give us our daily bread.” And no doubt it raises a theoretical problem. Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will. “God,” said Pascal, “instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.” But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity. It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God's mind—that is, His over-all purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.
“What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men.”
Something About a Soldier (1940)
Context: Wars, for us, are either inevitable, or created. Whatever they are, they should not wholly vitiate art. What art needs is greater men, and what politics needs is better men.
“Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever.”
Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)
Context: Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever. Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.
“talk was cheap and useless. Action was what mattered. And me, I was moving. Now, again, always.”
Source: What Happened to Goodbye
28 September 2020 in "Michelle Wu’s personal path to politics" https://commonwealthmagazine.org/politics/michelle-wus-personal-path-to-politics/ in Commonwealth Magazine
2020
