In The Act Quotes

#1. It is naive to think that self-assertiveness is easy. To live self-assertively
which means to live authentically
is an act of high courage. That is why so many people spend the better part of their lives in hiding
from others and also from themselves.

Nathaniel Branden

#2. Nuclear energy is a waste of time. They should go about harnessing the power of the unconscious when it is in the act of denying Death.

Steve Toltz

#3. The ultimate goal of yoga is to always observe things accurately, and therefore never act in a way that will make us regret our actions later.

T. K. V. Desikachar

#4. The doubling of oil prices ... is creating a more difficult environment in which to act.

Gordon Brown

#5. I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in, or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president.

John McCain

#6. If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.

Marcus Aurelius

#7. My mom was always pretty supportive. She saw me do plays and she'd always act out the parts I did. My aunt, who played a big part in my life, was a little bit more reserved, because if they don't see you on TV every week they think you must be starving.

Angela Bassett

#8. My teachers probably tried to get me interested in other things at school, but I was very young when I decided that I wanted to act. By the time I was 12, I was hell-bent on it.

Marc Warren

#9. His eyesight was possessed by the colours of trauma, cracking and bubbling like an old Super Eight film to remind him of his near-death drowning some two months ago in that very moment when he needed to act.

Luke Taylor

#10. I've found the 90-10 rule to be pretty true: 90 percent of what I come up with and write down is kinda 'eh,' and then somehow, someway, 10 percent of it happens to work out really great in my act.

Hasan Minhaj

#11. Heckling is an act of cowardice. If you want to speak, get up in front of the microphone and speak, don't sit in the dark hiding. It's easy to hide and shout and waste people's time.

Billy Connolly

#12. Art has to be, you know, trade itself, conform to the old strict guidelines set forth by how it was going to act in the future.

Immortal Technique

#13. With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with the first purge and execution, we have lost the revolution.

Kate Millett

#14. I think boredom is the beginning of every authentic act. ( ... ) Boredom opens up the space, for new engagements. Without boredom, no creativity. If you are not bored, you just stupidly enjoy the situation in which you are.

Slavoj Zizek

#15. Every act of suffering, no matter how small or agonisingly great, is a test of love in some way. Most of the time, suffering is also a test of our love for God.

Gregory David Roberts

#16. But shall we be happy, to say that we live in the dusk rather than in the full night? Shall we rejoice that we shall only suffer, while your offspring will be the ones to know the torments of the damned? Shall this be why we do not act?

Robin Hobb

#17. The offering up or cleaning up ego stuff is called purification. Purification is the act of letting go. This is done out of discriminative awareness. That is, you understand that you are an entity passing through a life in which the entire drama is an offering for your awakening.

Ram Dass

#18. The thought went through my mind that we should film ourselves in our sexual act, and project our frenzied copulation permanently onto the walls of the tea-room, as a lesson to wake up the boring people who drank tea here, and to show them what life was really all about.

Fiona Thrust

#19. In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write.

Natalie Goldberg

#20. Stephen Schlesinger's Act of Creation tells a dazzling story of the dramatic events that have shaped the world in which we live. Never has a book been more relevant to present dangers and future hopes.

James Chace

#21. Why did you act in this way, you pitiable ones? Make a bow of repentance, recognize your fault, be sorry for your nakedness. Neither one of them could blame himself, neither of them had the least bit of humility.

Dorotheus Of Gaza

#22. Most people are not, I have realized, emotionally well-practiced. We tend to misunderstand our fears and misinterpret our desires. We act when we ought to sit still; we feel when we should instead think, and in the end, this allows our emotions to handle us as opposed to us handling them.

Lynn Toler

#23. What America did in Vietnam and the Congo - we feel. And as a result come these demonstrations. I am not defending the act of burning USIS books. We deplore it. But we can understand the motives of the students.

Sukarno

#24. A mystery confounds the problem of industry in art. In the last analysis, to work is simply not enough. But we have to act as if it were, leaving reward aside.

Anne Truitt

#25. In conclusion it may be said that sin may be defined as lack of conformity to the moral law of God, either in act, disposition, or state

Louis Berkhof

#26. To think of criticism as a conversation is to think of it as a social act, something that puts you in touch with other people who may think the way you do.

Arlene Croce

#27. We've suffered a 'Ponzification' of the economy in recent years, as bubbles have built up and then burst, and each time we act as though it's the first time.

Mitchell Zuckoff

#28. This very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe.

Celia Thaxter

#29. The phrase 'perception is reality' is overused generally. But perception can be reality in monetary policy. The bond market doesn't act merely on what it sees. It acts on what it expects of the Fed or the government.

Amity Shlaes

#30. It is the everlasting disgrace of the Clinton Administration that it has chosen to betray America's heritage as a beacon of freedom, and instead to act as the ally and agent of a police state in retrieving one of its prisoners.

David Horowitz

#31. One can decide that the principal role of knowledge is as an indispensable element in the functioning of society, and act in accordance with that decision, only if one has already decided that society is a giant machine.

Jean-Francois Lyotard

#32. I always wanted to have a family - that was one of my big wishes. And in school, I'd taken drama, and I'd always wanted to act. I did go to drama school in New York, Los Angeles and London, and I did small parts here and there, but I never really had the time. Modeling was always paying more.

Jerry Hall

#33. Life is a balancing act. While we have all the rights to be in freedom, peace, harmony and bliss; we do have a responsibility to ensure that others too enjoy their own freedom, peace, harmony and bliss.

Vishwas Chavan

#34. I like to act. I work for scale. I don't have an acting agent. I'm in the book.

John Sayles

#35. My legislation, the Simple Savings Tax Relief Act of 2005, simply eliminates the taxation of interest earned in savings accounts, such as passbook savings accounts or bank certificates of deposit.

Cliff Stearns

#36. Happiness and unhappiness are in the heart and spirit of each one of us: If you feel unhappy, then place yourself above that and act so that your happiness does not get to be dependent on anything.

Catherine The Great

#37. While the word charity connotes a single act of giving, justice speaks to right living, of aligning oneself with the world in a way that sustains rather than exploits the rest of creation.

Rachel Held Evans

#38. I think 'Cool Hand Luke' was probably the first movie in which I was aware of the writing as its own separate thing. It was that speech when the guy reads Paul Newman the riot act. The speech about going in the box.

Brian Helgeland

#39. My dream is not Hollywood, but to perform my act in English to 30 people in a Soho comedy club, to show New Yorkers what they look like from the French point of view.

Gad Elmaleh

#40. I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that we were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition; it is the foolishest act a wise man commits in all his life.

Thomas Browne

#41. Carter is doing a high-wire act over a cesspool, preaching all the way. Sinclair Lewis, thou shouldst be living in this hour. We have a Warren Harding impersonating Elmer Gantry.

Jimmy Carter

#42. In this world is not the creative act of the genius always a protest against the inertia of the mass?

Adolf Hitler

#43. Nothing was anything until someone defined it. Nothing was inevitable. Nothing was inviolate. Everything existed, perhaps, by the act of faith, and we were always in the midst of creating our world, complete with the trappings of tradition that was nothing more than an invention like all the rest.

Anne Rice

#44. The greatest act of courage is not falling in love But, despite everything, falling in love again.

Robin Wayne Bailey

#45. God is triune; there are within the Godhead three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it and the Spirit applying it.

J.I. Packer

#46. Peace in the Middle East isn't going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side.

Mandy Patinkin

#47. Each of the humans chests are always rising and falling; and they sway minutely in place as they perform a constant balancing act to stay bipedal.

Daniel H. Wilson

#48. Dancing is so physical and so athletic. I think it rings to the boy that is in my soul because you get to run and jump and climb and act as aggressively as you'd like.

Stephen Boss

#49. As a rapper, you sort of act in music videos and in the persona you adopt onstage. You kinda have to put yourself out there and be courageous even to be a rapper. So, to step into acting was not that difficult a transition to make.

Queen Latifah

#50. Most of my act is improvisation. I'm inspired for the moment. Standing there in front of 2,000 or 3,000 people you don't know can be pretty inspiring.

Howie Mandel

#51. By tearing down the wall between law enforcement and the intelligence community, we have been able to share information in a way that was virtually impossible before the Patriot Act.

John Ashcroft

#52. When you've been locked up in a mental institution, people are going to ask questions. It was OK, because I didn't have to act perfect all the time.

Drew Barrymore

#53. As a parent, do the right thing and you don't get in trouble. If you lead a charmed life, you better act like it.

Leigh Anne Tuohy

#54. I very much hope that the United States will finally ... realise that they can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world and that they need to cooperate to resolve issues.

Sergei Lavrov

#55. He fills my thoughts, my dreams, and my nightmares. The memory of him, and his touch, pound on the door to my soul with such force that cracks are forming in the wood. I do my best to act like no one is home by keeping the door locked and the lights off.

Andrea Randall

#56. With drawing, I am acutely aware of creating something on a sheet of paper. It is a sensual act, which you cannot say about the act of writing. In fact, I often turn to drawing to recover from the writing.

Gunter Grass

#57. A person or nation begins to live and act according to the word of God, as a result of change in the value system and therefore life around them changes.

Sunday Adelaja

#58. The majority of people believe in incredible things which are absolutely false. The majority of people daily act in a manner prejudicial to their general well-being.

Ashley Montagu

#59. With the opening of the second decade of the twentieth century it seemed that the stage was set for the last act in an unquestioned evolutionary drama.

Ralph Adams Cram

#60. The danger in trying to do good is that the mind comes to confuse the intent of goodness with the act of doing things well.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#61. Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him from his ordinary notice of trifles; it is an act quite easy to be contemplated.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#62. The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past was troubling. I longed for a future too, with hope in it. The desire to be free, awakened my determination to act, to think, and to SPEAK.

Frederick Douglass

#63. Evan Lucien, if it is my last act upon this Earth," he says, his eyes intense and shadowed in the lantern light, "I will make you come.

Lilly Black

#64. He took two steps at a time, but slowly, holding onto the banister, putting his whole body into it, as if the act of climbing a flight of stairs was for him, as it is for many children, a moderately pleasurable end in itself.

J.D. Salinger

#65. The urge to act became the overriding force in my life. It thrilled me. There's a moment with acting when you're in the groove, and you and what you're trying to do are seamlessly one. That happens sometimes, and I'm really happy it can happen to me.

Rupert Graves

#66. When a law is in its nature a contract, when absolute rights have vested under that contract, a repeal of the law cannot divest those rights. The people can act only by their agents and, within the powers conferred upon them, their acts must be considered as the acts of the people.

John Marshall

#67. The desert wears ... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting
but waiting for what?

Edward Abbey

#68. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's strategy is to lead from behind. It sounds like what he is outlining is not to lead at all. We cannot continue to outsource foreign policy. We must lead. We are the most powerful nation in the world. We need to begin to act like it, again.

Marco Rubio

#69. He understood very little about this strange situation, and to act in a situation one does not understand is to invite the most terrible consequences.

Stephen King

#70. Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.

Gregory Maguire

#71. When it comes to acting, you really have to create movement which in some ways is dancing. And dancing, I feel is very important to act as well. I wouldn't put one over the other.

Harry Shum Jr.

#72. Therefore, before any action is taken, we must explain the policy, which we have formulated in the light of the given circumstances, to Party members and to the masses. Otherwise, Party members and the masses will depart from the guidance of our policy, act blindly and carry out a wrong policy.

Mao Zedong

#73. Here God is not approached as an object that we must love, but as a mystery present in the very act of love itself.

Peter Rollins

#74. Because as any writer will tell you, an IDEA for a book is like falling in love, it's all wild emotion and headlong rush, but the ACTUAL ACT of writing a book is like building a relationship: it is joyous, slow, fragile, frustrating, exhilarating, painstaking, exhausting, worth it.

Ben H. Winters

#75. Death can sneak up on you like a silent kitten, surprising you with its touch and you have a right to act surprised. Other times death stomps in the front door, unwanted and unannounced, and makes its noisy way to your seat on the sofa.

Hugh Elliot

#76. I also say "Boy" a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and some times I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair.

J.D. Salinger

#77. THE STEP-DAUGHTER: At present, we are unknown to the public. Tomorrow, you will act us as you wish, treating us in your own manner. But do you really want to see drama, do you want to see it flash out as it really did?

Luigi Pirandello

#78. Dream not that worldlings will admire you, or that the more holy and the more Christ-like you are, the more peaceably people will act towards you. They prized not the polished gem, how should they value the jewel in the rough?

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

#79. In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.

Henry Miller

#80. In life there are perfect moments. You cannot plan them - the very act interferes with the laws of the universe - but you must be ready to recognise them when they come.

Chloe Thurlow

#81. Wilberforce and the band of abolitionists knew that a private faith that did not act in the face of oppression was no faith at all.

Charles Colson

#82. If it be love indeed, tell me how much.
There's beggary in the love that can be reckon'd.
I'll set a bourn how far to be belov'd.
Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.
Antony and Cleopatra - Act 1, Scene 1

William Shakespeare

#83. The Pawn moves only one square at a time, and that straight forward, except in the act of capturing, when it takes one step diagonally to the right or left file on to the square occupied by the man taken, and continues on that file until it captures another man.

Howard Staunton

#84. Giving in to the forces of low ambition would be an act of climate appeasement. This is our Munich moment.

Chris Huhne

#85. In scripture God brings the animals to the human for naming. In that simple act the human is brought to recognize the particular personality and worth of each living creature. Too bad we forget so often.

Joan D. Chittister

#86. Lesson in life, kids. Life isn't like the movies, but you can sure as hell act like it is

Cherry_Cola_X

#87. Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction ... We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little by stepping back from the noise.

David L. Ulin

#88. In the act of love, as in photography, there is a form of life and a kind of slow death,

Nobuyoshi Araki

#89. Dreams in your life are like light bulbs that brighten your room. But having them on the ceiling is just not enough; you got to make an effort by pressing on the switch and there it goes taking away the darkness!

Israelmore Ayivor

#90. She clutched him, her fingers digging in like she needed to gather parts of him to act as her own second skin for the rest of her life.

Melina Marchetta

#91. Trust no future, however pleasant! Let the dead past bury its dead! Act
act in the living Present! Heart within and God overhead.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#92. China is beginning to act more like a world citizen. We need China to be more active on the world stage. For example, we should want China to be a bigger participant and a bigger shareholder in the IMF. We should want it to be an even more active participant in the G8 and G20.

Roger Altman

#93. You have a responsibility to act for others when you're the only person in a position to do so. It's how you handle it that separates the great from the mediocre.

Wilbert Rideau

#94. In the first act get your principal character up a tree; in the second act, throw stones at him; in the third, get him down gracefully.

Anonymous

#95. The country has sorted itself ideologically into the two political parties, and those partisan attachments have hardened in recent years. It will take an extraordinary event and act of leadership to break this partisan divide. I thought 9/11 might provide such an opportunity, but it was not seized.

Thomas E. Mann

#96. Excellent cognitive function starts in the kitchen because that's where the nutritional materials (whole foods) are prepared to act as our brain and body building blocks.

John Pierre

#97. Murder in and of itself was not engaging; it was the drive to kill, the human factor, the fervors and furies motivating the dreadful act that rendered it compelling. Alice

Kate Morton

#98. Re: Full Disclosure
Sharing with parents all the ways we tricked them as a child is no more amusing to them when we are in our fifties than it would have been had they caught us in the act.

Ron Brackin

#99. I hold no brief for Communists, but I believe in and will defend their right to act independently within the law. I question whether members of the committee are interested in defending our form of government or whether they are attempting to suppress political opinion at odds with their own.

Gregory Peck

#100. Man may act according to that principle or inclination which for the present happens to be strongest, and yet act in a way disproportionate to, and violate his real proper nature.

Joseph Butler