Quotes about act
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“What has made this whole process so special is that above all - especially in terms of the pace of change – it has been determined by the creative and spontaneous activity of the broad mass of the people, with the communists in the vanguard. In this spirit and in accord with the plenary session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, people have acted without the slightest manipulation and without being given commands from above. The role of the party is to recognize people’s understanding, to raise it to a higher plane, to support progressive thinking and acts.”

Alexander Dubček (1921–1992) first Secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party

Speech to a meeting of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia's Central Committee outlining the reforms known as Socialism with a human face, April 1, 1968. Quoted in Alexander Dubček: hope and despair in 1968 https://english.radio.cz/alexander-dubcek-hope-and-despair-1968-8588161 (January 22, 2009) by David Vaughan, Radio Prague

People, Understanding, Support, Thinking

“Use your enemy's weaknesses to your advantage. On the other hand, if your enemy is too strong, retreat and act again on the day you conquer it.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

Strong

“Great acts are made up of small deeds.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…

Wise

“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Motivational, Back To Work

“We can naturally say with reasonable certainty that the greater events we are told are fact... However, the histories, causes, propaganda and acts related to these and other events are exactly what self-serving rulers of religious and political power systems creatively recorded.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

History, Nature

“Good people do not need law to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

People, Law, Way

“I never got a Oscar. I never had an acting lesson. Life was my only training.”

Barbara Stanwyck (1907–1990) American actress

op. cit.

Life, Training

“One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

“The true meaning of kindness reveals itself to us whenever we do a very kind act.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“All portions of this confederacy should act in harmony and with careful deliberation. The Democrats cry John Brown invasion. We are guiltless of it, but our denial does not satisfy them. Nothing will satisfy them but disinfecting the atmosphere entirely of all opposition to slavery. They have not demanded of us to yield the guards of liberty in our state constitutions, but it will naturally come to that after a while. If we give up to them, we cannot refuse even their utmost request. If slavery is right, it ought to be extended; if not, it ought to be restricted, there is no middle ground. Wrong as we think it, we can afford to let it alone where it of necessity now exists; but we cannot afford to extend it into free territory and around our own homes. Let us stand against it!”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)

Home, Nature, Thinking, Cry

“I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Source: 1860s, Telegram to George B. McClellan (1862)

Feeling

“There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to 'mean' horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Chapter II The Vigor of Life http://www.bartleby.com/55/2.html 1910s, Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)

Horse

“Some say ‘Man is what he eats’ and some say ‘A man’s thinking determines his character’. It might be even more true to say ‘A man’s life and character are governed by his breathing’! This is because a person can neither digest what he eats nor act up to his ideas unless his breathing qualifies him to do so.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing, p. 101

Life, Idea, Thinking, Personality

“A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well — in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.”

Mikhail Bakunin book Statism and Anarchy

Source: Statism and Anarchy (1873), "Appendix A"

People, Truth, Lie, Strong

“There is a great analogy between grace and genius, for genius is a grace. The real man of genius is the one who acts by grace or by impulsion, without ever contemplating himself and without ever saying to himself: Yes! It is by grace that I act.”

Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821) Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat

"Of Experiment and of the Genius of Discoveries," p. 37
An Examination of the Philosophy of Francis Bacon (1836)

“When we resort to violence ... we lose sight of why we are in the world and even end up committing senseless acts of cruelty. We see this in the folly of war, where Christ is crucified yet another time.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

"In the Palm Sunday Mass, Pope Francis pushes for peace in Ukraine" in NPR https://www.npr.org/2022/04/10/1091929949/palm-sunday-pope-francis-ukraine (10 April 2022) 2020s, 2022

War, World, Time, Christ

“Love consists in embracing acts of obedience and in avoiding acts of disobedience which implies that the devotee of God develops his kinship with God as he merges his will in His will and avoids that which is forbidden by Him.”

Sahl al-Tustari (818–896) arabian Sufi, Islamic theologian

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 54

Love, God

“When you come from your memory, you create one kind of experience. When you come from your intention, you create another kind of experience altogether. Always, with your choices, you are answering a single question: Who am I? Every act is an act of self-definition.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

Question, Memory

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

Incorrectly attributed to Tolkien. It is a line from the Hobbit movie that did not appear in the books.

Love, Evil

“We know that kindness is always pleasant and reassuring. But strangely not everyone thinks and acts this way.”

Titon Rahmawan

Way, Thinking

This quote waiting for review.

“Literature is an act of communion.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: https://www.mundoclasico.com/articulo/45227/entrevista-intrapersonal-confrontada-omar-jerez-con-jose-baroja

Literature

This quote waiting for review.

“Literature is an act of existential stubbornness.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Manuel Raya Escritor. (2026, 21 marzo). ENTREVISTA AL ESCRITOR CHILENO JOSÉ BAROJA 🇨🇱✍🏼 [Vídeo]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBrHyubZCFM

Literature

“Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Truth, Thinking

“Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.”

Stephen R. Covey (1932–2012) American educator, author, businessman and motivational speaker

“… but somehow the madness around me and the turmoil I carried within myself acted as counterweights, and I survived in the centre.”

Laurie R. King book The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Source: The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Madness

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”

George Lois (1931) American art director, designer and author

Problem

“To think, analyze and invent are not anomalous acts, but the normal respiration of the intelligence.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

Source: Ficciones

Intelligence, Thinking

“I know you’re almost forty, look almost thirty, think you’re just over twenty and act as though you’re barely ten.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book Blood of Elves

Source: Blood of Elves

Thinking

“Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith

Laughter

“I wanted to tell people, "My depression is acting up today" as an excuse for not seeing them, but I never managed to pull it off.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

People

“Man is the only living species that has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Way, History

“Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.”

William Blake book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 41

Thinking, Sleep, Night, Good Morning

“Love is an act of faith & its face should always be covered in mystery. Every moment should be lived with feeling & emotion because if we try to decipher it & understand it, the magic disappears.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Spy

Love, Faith, Feeling, Understanding

“Every small, unselfish action nudges the world into a better path. An accumulation of small acts can change the world.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Fate

Source: Fool's Fate

World, Change

“The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs,” he said. “If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

Source: No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

Personality

“We must act out passion before we can feel it.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Feeling, Passion

“… the finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

“I think we're given multiple chances to meet multiple soulmates. Sure, you could meet a soulmate in highschool. But that doesn't mean if you don't act on it, you'll never meet anyone else. You will, just at a time that's more convenient for you.”

Meg Cabot book How to Be Popular

Source: How to Be Popular

Thinking, Chance, Time

“Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley Temple could do it at the age of four.”

Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) film, stage, and television actress

Age, Way

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”

Khaled Hosseini (1965) novelist

Truth

“To know what is right and choose to ignore it is the act of a coward.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

“I didn't know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

World, Cry

“There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.”

Edmund Burke book An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs

Source: An Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs (1791), p. 460

Men, Feeling, Imagination, Passion

“You can never visit the same place twice. Each time, it's a different story. By the very act of coming back, you wipe out what came before.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Time

“That chain of relationships made me think of how connections are made--you read a book, you meet a person, you have a single experience, and your life is changed in some way. No act, therefore, however small, should be dismissed or ignored.”

Howard Zinn (1922–2010) author and historian

Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

Life, Books, Way, Thinking

“In the act of tearing something apart, you lose its meaning.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Blink

Source: Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Tear

“Faith doesn't mean you never doubt. It only means you never act upon your doubts.”

Orson Scott Card Sarah

Source: Sarah

Faith

“Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back.”

Jodi Picoult book Second Glance

Source: Second Glance

People

“What is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?”

Dave Eggers Zeitoun

Source: Zeitoun

Faith

“It is the act of reading itself that I miss, the opportunity to retreat further and further from the world until I have found some space, some air that isn't stale, that hasn't been breathed by my family a thousand times already.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Source: How to Be Good

World, Family, Time, Reading

“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”

Umberto Eco book The Prague Cemetery

Source: The Prague Cemetery

People, Evil

“If we had the courage to love we would not so value these acts of war.”

Jeanette Winterson book The Passion

Source: The Passion

Love, War, Courage

“For those who know the value of and exquisite taste of solitary freedom (for one is only free when alone), the act of leaving is the bravest and most beautiful of all.”

Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904) Swiss explorer and author

Source: The Nomad: The Diaries of Isabelle Eberhardt

Beauty, Freedom

“Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Love, Marriage

“Forgiveness is a mystical act, not a reasonable one.”

Caroline Myss (1952) author from the United States

Source: Defy Gravity: Healing Beyond the Bounds of Reason

Forgiveness

“… It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Source: Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Motivation, Learning

“Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

"A Kind Word", in DNRC Newsletter #9 (December 1995) http://web.archive.org/web/19970412134441/www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/newsletter/html/newsletter09.html

“Writing is the act of discovery.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Source: Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstacies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

Page 159
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Lovers, Nature, Solitude, Suffering

“Writing is not some quiet, closet act.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

“The purpose of life is to familiarize oneself with this after-death body so that the act of dying will not create confusion in the psyche.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Life, Death

“Joy is the goal of existence, and joy is not to be stumbled upon, but to be achieved, and the act of treason is to let its vision drown in the swamp of the moment's torture.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Joy

“Love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest and bravest acts are done for love.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Variant: My point is that love is the most powerful motivator in the world. It spurs mortals to greatness. Their noblest, bravest acts are done for love.
Source: The Lost Hero

Love, World, Motivation

“To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Context: Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity; to all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing.

Way, Appearance, Time

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”

D.H. Lawrence book Women in Love

Source: Women in Love

Horse

“And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

“the juniors were acting different because they are now the seniors. They even had T-shirts made. I don't know who plans these things.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Evident in every small act of kindness, it was love as a verb. Love that made me feel more complete than I had ever felt in my glamorous, Jimmy Choo filled past.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Something Blue

Love, Feeling, Past

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life. All that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Life, Happiness

“I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.”

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) French philosopher

Je dirais qu'il faut agir en homme de pensée et penser en homme d'action. Speech at the Descartes Conference http://books.google.com/books?id=BynXAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Je+dirais+qu'il+faut+agir+en+homme+de+pens%C3%A9e+et+penser+en+homme+d'action%22&pg=PA1579#v=onepage in Paris (1937) Quoted in The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life (1950), p. 442, as "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."

Thinking

“It is an extraordinary act of courage,' said Tulas Shorn, 'to come to know a stranger's pain.”

Steven Erikson (1959) Canadian fantasy author

Pain, Courage

“John Brooke is acting dreadfully, and Meg likes it!”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“As I have often said, she has two styles of acting: with or without the beard.”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?

“What if love wasn't the act of finding what you were missing but the give-and-take that made you both match?”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Love

“To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.”

Lillian Hellman (1905–1984) American dramatist and screenwriter

Confidence

“If you go to your death rather than do everything you might to prevent what is happening, you are merely committing suicide and trying to make yourself feel better about it. That is the act of a coward. It is beneath contempt.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Death, Feeling, Suicide

“The knowledge that she would never be loved in return acted upon her ideas as a tide acts upon cliffs.”

Thornton Wilder book The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Source: The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Love, Idea, Knowledge

“Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the challenges are just balanced with the person's capacity to act.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Appearance, Personality

“It is human nature to think wisely and to act in an absurd fashion.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Il est dans la nature humaine de penser sagement et d'agir d'une façon absurde. Le livre de mon ami http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Livre_de_Pierre_-_Premi%C3%A8res_conqu%C3%AAtes#II._La_Dame_en_blanc (1885): Le livre de Pierre, part I, ch. II: La dame en blanc

Fashion, Nature, Thinking

“All that is necessary to break the spell of inertia and frustration is this: Act as if it were impossible to fail.”

Dorothea Brande (1893–1948) American writer and editor