Top 100 Great Action Quotes
#1. We can choose to be truthful even when the choice means personal loss. We can choose to undertake a great action - unselfish, courageous, daringly creative - that looks unreasonable and irrational to the eye of the Ego.
Ilchi Lee
#2. There was a man who was worthless, and knew he was worthless, and yet however far down he tried to sink his soul, there was always some part of him capable of great action.
Cassandra Clare
#3. Every book is a great action and every great action is a book!
Martin Luther
#4. The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848.
C.L.R. James
#6. To take up the cross of Christ is no great action done once for all; it consists in the continual practice of small duties which are distasteful to us.
John Henry Newman
#7. Every great action is extreme when it is undertaken. Only after it has been accomplished does it seem possible to those creatures of more common stuff.
Stendhal
#8. Ambition is the necessary spur of a great mind to great action; when acting upon a weak mind it impels it to absurdity, or sours it with discontent.
Frances Wright
#9. Even with some of the best action films like The Bourne Ultimatum, which is a great action film with a great chase sequence, so much of it is computer-generated. But that doesn't bother me. I think it works. It's fantastic.
William Friedkin
#10. What interested me in doing 'Dragonball' was that it's a huge comic book series that has built a great fan base, and it's a great action movie!
Texas Battle
#11. How often it is that a small action becomes great by its intention. And how often it is that a great action becomes small by its intention.
Abdullah Ibn Mubarak
#12. The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone, like the bloom from a soiled flower.
James Anthony Froude
#13. Enthusiasm ... the sustaining power of all great action.
Samuel Smiles
#14. Animation is a great way to work. No early morning call times, no make-up chair. In live action, you're always fighting the clock; the sun is always going down too soon.
John C. Reilly
#15. The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time -
Kim Stanley Robinson
#17. 'Tis virtue, and not birth that makes us noble: Great actions speak great minds, and such should govern.
John Fletcher
#18. Please let me assure you, however, that the keen disappointment and regret which I feel in this regard serve only to enhance my profound appreciation of the great honor which you have done me; and my sincere gratitude for your generous action.
Cordell Hull
#19. We should be writing more great roles for women, period. Another problem is that movies are generally made for 14-year-old boys, and 14-year-old boys want to watch 25-year-old action heroes.
James Mangold
#20. But china is seldom thrown from a great height; it is one of the rarest of human actions. You have to find in conjunction a very high house, and a woman of such reckless impulse and passionate prejudice that she flings her jar or pot straight from the window without thought of who is below.
Virginia Woolf
#21. You need to be prepared for firm decisions and action, without losing gentleness towards those who obstruct or abuse you. It's as great a weakness to be angry with them as it is to abandon your plan of action and give up through fear.
Marcus Aurelius
#22. Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#23. Any role that's proactive is a great role, and action roles are by their very nature proactive. You get to do stuff. I hate sitting in a corner - I'd much prefer an action role in a popcorn movie rather than pining in a corner not doing anything.
Helen Mirren
#24. The other great heritage is Christian ethics - the basis of action on love, the brotherhood of all men, the value of the individual, the humility of the spirit. These two heritages are logically, thoroughly consistent.
Richard Feynman
#25. When we approached the Man of Action guys, we said, "We're not really interested in what's come before, except in the way that we want to make sure that it feels like it's Marvel's Avengers Assemble. From that point on, this is your cast. Go to it and tell great stories."
Jeph Loeb
#26. The Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government asserted itself; there was a great deal of talk and no decisive action.
H.G.Wells
#27. A story that has nothing but action and plot is a pretty poor affair; and some great stories have neither.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#28. The greatest gift in life is the ability to think great thoughts and have the strength to take action so that those thoughts become reality in this wonderful and abundant world.
Jack Black
#29. Death is supposed to be the great equalizer, but that's never true. Death is random, capricious, unconcerned, a flagrant player of favorites. It keeps its own counsel, so much the better to profoundly shock by its actions.
Kenneth Turan
#31. They're called 'action scenes' because they do the acting for you. You don't have to act in action scenes. The action does it all for you. It's great.
Helen Mirren
#32. I love doing action scenes, there's that great thing when you sort of stop acting because if you're running, you're not acting like you're running, you are just actually running.
Sarah Wayne Callies
#33. Nicolas Cage is a great actor and he's done some good action movies too.
Dolph Lundgren
#34. You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.
Peter Drucker
#35. There are two great classes of men: the people and the scholars, the men of science. For the former, nothing exists but that which directly leads to action. It is for the latter to see beyond. They are the free artists who create the future and its history, the conscious architects of the world.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
#36. Unkindness is inspired by hatred, anger fuels it into action in which there is no great joy; it would take sadism to turn it into something pleasurable; unkind people imagine themselves to be inflicting pain on someone equally unkind.
Marcel Proust
#37. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it, namely, that, in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain.
Mark Twain
#38. What makes the vault so spectacular is because it's a very athletic type of event, where it needs a lot of speed, a lot of explosive action and, of course, great coordination.
Bela Karolyi
#39. Men of ideas and men of action have much to learn from each other, and the truly great are men of both action and abstraction.
Jack Donovan
#40. It's all about the sensuality of movement, every movement you make. That's why I love doing action movies. It's all about movement, dance - even if you're hitting someone in the face. You've got to sell it all with great passion. There's a narrative to the body. It's exactly the same as dance.
DeObia Oparei
#41. It must be a great comfort tae him, and tae all, that you have helped so considerably with matters of the Clan," Aiden said. To his left, Ranulf choked on the contents of his tankard and Adalwulf's eyes narrowed.
Claire M. Banschbach
#42. The great political tragedy of our time is that conservative leaders in America have chosen to use their superior messaging and political skills to thwart serious action on global warming.
Joseph J. Romm
#43. Being innovative is to allow yourself to expose your mind to something great that has potential to change lives and the world positively and you take action on it.
Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
#44. Biographies of great, but especially of good men are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels,
teaching high living ,high thinking, and energetic action, for their own and, the world's good.
Samuel Smiles
#45. One of the great things about the 'Iron Man' franchise is that they employ fascinating actors who don't necessarily do action movies. Before 'Iron Man' you didn't associate Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow with those kinds of films. There's an emphasis on repartee and wit.
Rebecca Hall
#46. I don't want to do an action movie, because I've acted in them, and they're so boring to do, because they're so technical. The headache of that is daunting. But, if it were an action movie with really interesting characters, how great would that be?
Tony Goldwyn
#47. Nationwide thinking, nationwide planning and nationwide action are the three great essentials to prevent nationwide crises for future generations to struggle through.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#48. It's Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills.
Douglas Brinkley
#49. Windmills, which are used in the great plains of Holland and North Germany to supply the want of falling water, afford another instance of the action of velocity. The sails are driven by air in motion - by wind.
Hermann Von Helmholtz
#50. The aim of great books is ethical: to teach what it means to be a man. Every major form of literary art has taken for its deeper themes what T.S. Eliot called "the permanent things"-the norms of human action.
Russell Kirk
#51. Every noble action is selfish. Some selfish actions are nobler than others. But they are all selfish. And as such there can be no action purely noble anyway. Even the nobility in God's great philosophical intentions is bounded by his vanity.
Kedar Joshi
#52. Walk through the past and learn the way. I am walking through the present, taking action every day. I am preparing for the future in a great way.
Debasish Mridha
#53. I like heist movies. I like action movies that set all the elements into one and a chance to do something that comes from a great stable of writing.
Jason Statham
#54. You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward
Miguel Ruiz
#55. Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.
Norman Vincent Peale
#56. But as we've said before, there is great power in all of us, if only we channel that power into action.
Thomas Wheeler
#57. I fail to see the issue that will shock the people of this great country of ours into some decisive action.
Graham Nash
#58. Me and Lucas Black are actually starring in that movie 'Fast and the Furious 3: Tokyo.' It's gonna be hot and different. My first action movie, so it's gonna be great.
Bow Wow
#59. Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
Giorgos Seferis
#60. I love 'Goodfellas' because it's a great movie - it's funny and there is action at perfect points. I just think Martin Scorsese makes everyone look really cool.
Booboo Stewart
#61. Practicing yoga is a constant evolution. The Ashtanga system can appear very rigid, with its predetermined sequences, but actually there's great freedom within its structure. From the repetition, we learn to find depth in the minutiae of the actions and the wonder of breath and prana.
David F. Swensen
#62. If what you know and what you love are the same thing, that's great. But if not, write what you love. I love history, secrets, conspiracies, action, adventure, international settings.
Steve Berry
#63. It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. But to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing
David Hume
#64. You may cry out tears for misplacing your money, but you got to cry out blood if you have misplaced your dreams. Sadly, you may not even know the great deal of influence you loss when you misplace your dreams, so how will you cry for such a loss?
Israelmore Ayivor
#65. Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood.
H.P. Lovecraft
#66. The majority of the great fortunes were "won not by doing evil, but as an incident to action which has benefited the community as a whole.
Doris Kearns Goodwin
#67. The great problem of legislation is, so to organize the civil government of a community ... that in the operation of human institutions upon social action, self-love and social may be made the same.
John Quincy Adams
#68. Even limited military actions end up carrying with them great costs and unintended consequences.
Barack Obama
#69. Learning to endure, transform by perspective or action, and be grateful is the fast lane to a good life. That's right. Having great luck and fortune is not the conduit to a loving and enjoyable life; gratitude is.
Laura C. Schlessinger
#70. I secretly harbor the fantasy of becoming an action star at any moment. I know I'd be great at it.
Elizabeth Banks
#71. Great wisdom not applied to action and behavior is meaningless data.
Peter Drucker
#72. It's just about going out and getting the shot, so I have a great understanding of how to execute it, so that really helps me, and also having a good understanding of all the action that I'm shooting, it helps me in determining how I'm going to capture it.
David R. Ellis
#73. Action shouldn't just be seeing all those crashes. You can blow up a cathedral; next time you blow up the Great Wall of China, and then what? But when you're in love with your characters, the smallest action becomes an important action.
Michelle Yeoh
#74. Great changes in our society are always inspired and set in motion by one person. Be that person today.
Steve Maraboli
#75. I have been a big fan of the 'Fast and the Furious' franchise. The films are fast-paced, fun and keep the audience involved. There is a great mix of humor and action, something I really appreciate.
Tony Jaa
#76. Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.
Jonathan Swift
#77. Mind the ground, oh yes check the land before you build that mansion. It is only a fallacy to build a great mansion on a waterlogged land without first attending to the land. You shall only sleep in a mansion with problems! Mind the ground!
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#78. Courage is defined as: the ability to face danger, difficulty, uncertainty, or pain without being overcome by fear or being deflected from a chosen course of action. Many of today's world leaders have great courage: I wonder ... would we be better off with cowardice?
Joshua Fernandez
#79. No matter how brilliant an action, it should not be considered great unless it was the result of a great motive.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#80. When your every thought and your every action is directed to your ultimate life goals, you become unstoppable and assured of great success and happiness.
Robin Sharma
#83. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day, every day, sleeping its life away.
Ray Bradbury
#84. I think that the American people should rest assured and be assured that every federal agency that has a role to play in this terrorism is working overtime now, taking every necessary action to protect our great citizens.
Hugh Shelton
#85. The road that connects our thoughts to the ears of others is our tongue. What travel on this road is our word. Our action is the energy which transmits our emotions to the eyes of others and causes a great change in their minds
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#86. All good conversation, manners, and action come from a spontaneity which forgets usages and makes the moment great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#87. It is pleasant to be admitted into the birth-chamber of a great idea destined to be translated into action.
Augustine Birrell
#88. For the moment and for some time great events have been denied me, forward action not come my way.
John Burns
#89. I'm a little greedy for action scenes. I'm a martial artist, and any time I get to show off some of that art is great.
David Ramsey
#90. Call it what you will, it's about getting up off your chair, going where the action is, and seeing things firsthand. Because when we see things for ourselves, with our own two eyes, it changes us.
David Sturt
#91. I enjoy doing an action scene. I'm not a purist as far as films go. If you want to do sex, great. As long as you do it well.
Keira Knightley
#92. The great end of life is not knowledge but action.
Francis Bacon
#94. If you are really great, you will let others discover this fact from your actions.
Napoleon Hill
#95. My father was an immigrant who literally walked across Europe to get out of Russia. He fought in World War I. He was wounded in action. My father was a great success even though he never had money. He was a very determined man, a great role model.
Arlen Specter
#96. It is not necessary for all men to be great in action. The greatest and sublimest power is often simple patience.
Horace Bushnell
#97. Leo had seen Tia Callida in action; she liked knives, snakes and putting babies in roaring fires. Yeah, definitely let's unleash her rage. Great idea.
Rick Riordan
#98. Upon the whole it was a Glorious day-Our men are in the Spirits-and I am confident we shall give them a total defeat the next Action; which is at no great distance.
Anthony Wayne
#99. I love scenes that are just emotional give and take. By the same token, action sequences are great to do. They have their own unique demands and requirements. So I take it as it comes, and hopefully you can get a good balance of all of that stuff.
Stephen Lang
#100. Today this courtyard was filled with great warriors. What is more? But it was not filled with great men who have the heart to rule a kingdom. Any man can kill, Finnikin. It is a stroke, an action with one's hand. But not every man knows how to lead.
Melina Marchetta
