Top 100 Quotes About Human Actions
#1. No human actions ever were intended by the Maker of men to be guided by balances of expediency, but by balances of justice.
John Ruskin
#2. Pythagoras based musical education in the first place on certain melodies and rhythm that exercised a healing, a purifying influence on the human actions and passions, restoring 'Pristine Harmony' of the souls' faculties. He applied the same means to the curing of diseases of both body and mind ...
Porphyry
#3. I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.
Baruch Spinoza
#4. Love is eternal. It has been the strongest motivation for human actions throughout history. Love is stronger than life. It reaches beyond the dark shadow of death.
Vera Caspary
#5. The necessity of war, which among human actions is the most lawless, hath some kind of affinity with the necessity of law.
Walter Raleigh
#7. It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.
Zadie Smith
#8. All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.
Jean-Paul Sartre
#9. 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
#10. Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.
Michel De Montaigne
#11. Judge not,' it has been said, but being a juryman can be a pleasant occupation when one is not weighing up human actions and years in prison, but the books or the wines of the season.
Claudio Magris
#12. Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#13. My life up until my illness could be understood as the linear sum of my choices. As in most modern narratives, a character's fate depended on human actions, his and others.
Paul Kalanithi
#14. There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.
Terry Eagleton
#15. Every human actions becomes dangerous when it is deprived of human feeling. When they are performed with feeling and respect for human values, all activities become constructive.
Dalai Lama XIV
#16. The cynic puts all human actions into two classes - openly bad and secretly bad.
Henry Ward Beecher
#17. Kindness and generosity ... form the true morality of human actions.
Madame De Stael
#18. The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
Nhat Hanh
#19. Professional psychologists seem to think that they are the only people who make sense out of human actions. The rest of us know that everybody tries to do just this. What else is gossip?
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
#20. In some cases there are ways of thinking about what an architectural program produces - interior and exterior - that is not necessarily directed by an economic requirement, but is a diagram based on human actions, selfish or otherwise.
Jimenez Lai
#21. The dread of evil is a much more forcible principle of human actions than the prospect of good.
John Locke
#22. Now that Stevenson is dead I can think of but one English- speaking author who is really keeping his self-respect and sticking forperfection. Of course I refer to that mighty master of language and keen student of human actions and motives, Henry James.
Willa Cather
#23. I shall treat the nature and power of the Affects, and the power of the Mind over them, by the same Method by which, in the preceding parts, I treated God and the Mind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were a Question of lines, planes, and bodies.
Baruch Spinoza
#24. No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
W. H. Auden
#25. Let us not forget that the reasons for human actions are usually incalculably more complex and diverse than we tend to explain them later, and are seldom clearly manifest.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#27. For an entire populace, change, growth, and spontaneity were dangerous. Acting upon a personal desire, whispering a hidden longing, revealing your true feelings - all the human actions we think of as essential to a character - had be censored by the self lest they be punished by the state.
Adam Johnson
#28. Today and always, there will be an obligation to pass on to the new generation the tradition of liberal scholarship - scientific or in the humanities - and to bring the understanding of things and human actions to everyone.
Frank Macfarlane Burnet
#29. Fear or stupidity has always been the basis of most human actions.
Albert Einstein
#30. The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language
the word 'enthusiasm'
en theos
a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.
Louis Pasteur
#31. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences, and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone.
Gerda Lerner
#32. Once you realize that human actions affect every bit of earth and sky, you realize that the environment isn't just what surrounds us - it's all one whole.
Alison Hawthorne Deming
#33. Collective human actions are transforming, even ravaging, the biosphere - perhaps irreversibly - through global warming and loss of biodiversity.
Martin Rees
#34. Responsibility has become the fundamental imperative in modern civilization, and it should be an unavoidable criterion to assess and evaluate human actions, including, in a special way, development activities.
Hans Jonas
#35. To treat of human actions is to deal wholly with second causes.
Herman Melville
#36. Forgiveness allows us to live in the sunlight of the present, not the darkness of the past. Forgiveness alone, of all our human actions, opens up the world to the miracle of infinite possibility.
Kent Nerburn
#37. It is for the reader to see in the book the nature of the motives of human actions and perhaps learn something too of the motives behind the social forces which judge those actions and which, I take it, we call a system of morality.
Anthony Burgess
#38. All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire. Aristotle
Christine Zolendz
#39. Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#40. Now, in the modern money economy everything in the nature of a social-economic occurrence consists in human actions and behaviour.
Oskar Morgenstern
#41. A sense of the past is far more basic to the maintenance of freedom than hope for the future. The former is concrete and real; the latter is necessarily amorphous and more easily guided by those who can manipulate human actions and beliefs.
Robert A. Nisbet
#42. I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.
Baruch Spinoza
#43. Somewhere, somehow, at some unknown intersection between prayer and work, God indwells our humble offering - God indwells us - and turns human actions into spiritual awakenings.
Jared Brock
#44. Climate change has happened because of human behaviour, therefore it's only natural it should be us, human beings, to address this issue. It may not be too late if we take decisive actions today.
Ban Ki-moon
#45. Such actions are beyond praise: it is the perfume of such sweet and noble human sympathy that makes this wild beasts' cage a world habitable for men.
Frank Harris
#46. Peace - the word evokes the simplest and most cherished dream of humanity. Peace is, and has always been, the ultimate human aspiration. And yet our history overwhelmingly shows that while we speak incessantly of peace, our actions tell a very different story.
Javier Perez De Cuellar
#47. Osama bin Laden's writings and actions constitute a direct negation of human liberty, and vent an undisguised hatred and contempt for life itself.
Christopher Hitchens
#48. The greatest misfortune that can come to a human being is to lose his inner peace. No outer force can rob him of it. It is his own thoughts, his own actions, that rob him of it.
Sri Chinmoy
#49. The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, takes responsibility for his actions, treats others with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and avoids it. Without the hidden conspiracy of goodwill, society would not endure an hour.
Kenneth Rexroth
#50. There are many, many ways to be imprisoned. You don't need fences, handcuffs, chains, or steel bars. Your heart or your own mind can imprison you within yourself. Another human being can imprison you with their actions and thoughts.
Cary Allen Stone
#51. I believe that we must maintain pride in the knowledge that the actions we take, based on our own decisions and choices as individuals, link directly to the magnificent challenge of transforming human history.
Daisaku Ikeda
#52. Now, an hour later, Ethan stood at a window, gazing at the rain, like threads of seed pearls, accessorizing the hills of Bel Air.
Watching weather clarified his thinking.
Sometimes only nature felt real, while all human monuments and actions seemed to be the settings and the plots of dreams.
Dean Koontz
#53. The spread of democracy, the new foundation of the rule of law, and the creation of fledgling representative governments that honor and respect human rights-together these actions spell out the increasing marginalization of the terrorists, as they have fewer and fewer places to run and hide.
John Cornyn
#54. A great paradox which should God make us understand, we will weep, laugh, wonder and ponder is the paradox of human ignorance
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#55. The talent for self-justification is surely the finest flower of human evolution, the greatest achievement of the human brain. When it comes to justifying actions, every human being acquires the intelligence of an Einstein, the imagination of a Shakespeare, and the subtlety of a Jesuit.
Michael Foley
#56. The most characteristic concern of rhetoric [is] the manipulation of men's beliefs for political ends ... the basic function of rhetoric [is] the use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents.
Kenneth Burke
#57. Just as human activity is upsetting Earth's carbon cycle, our actions are altering the water cycle.
David Suzuki
#58. Human beings and their actions constitute the advancing front, the surging crest of an ongoing movement that never stops.
Corliss Lamont
#59. But we must be aware that art cannot be used to show the validity of Christianity; it should rather be the reverse. Christianity is true; things and actions and human endeavor only get their meaning from their relationship to God.
H.R. Rookmaaker
#60. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.
Nelson Mandela
#61. Nice and good are different. Being nice involves immediate actions and immediate consequences - you give water to the thirsty and comfort to the afflicted right here, right now. Being good involves living in the world so that you contribute to the welfare of your fellow human beings.
Charles Murray
#62. When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.
Shirin Ebadi
#63. Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself, and of its own nature; such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of actions, the turn of characters, and the proportions and features of a human mind.
Anthony Ashley Cooper
#64. As human beings we govern our actions with our deepest fears. But if you name that shit, you claim that shit: let enough people into your closet and you'll find there's no more room for skeletons. Leave yourself nowhere to hide and you can live your life unguarded.
Kevin Smith
#65. Like a human being, a company has to have an internal communication mechanism, a "nervous system", to coordinate its actions.
Bill Gates
#66. In any case, perhaps the quest for data to support our actions gets overemphasized. After all, our emotions distinguish us. Art and poetry and music are from and to the human heart, as is, for many, our relationship with the land.' ~ Randy Morgenson
Eric Blehm
#67. One advantage resulting from good actions is that they elevate the soul to a disposition of attempting still better; for such is human weakness, that we must place among our good deeds an abstinence from those crimes we are tempted to commit.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#68. May no one use religion as a pretext for actions against human dignity and against the fundamental rights of every man and woman.
Pope Francis
#69. Images at their passionate and truthful best are as powerful as words can ever be. If they alone cannot bring change, they can at least provide and understanding mirror of man's actions, thereby sharpening human awareness and awakening conscience.
Cornell Capa
#70. The craving for colour is a natural necessity just as for water and fire. Colour is a raw material indispensable to life. At every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures.
Fernand Leger
#71. The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.
Albert Einstein
#72. There are many ways to tell the history of the world. Oral histories that were later written down, including the Book of Genesis, the Rig Veda, and the Popul Vuh, focused especially on the actions of gods and on human/divine interactions. The
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks
#73. Striving to be good is the ultimate struggle of every man. Being bad is easy, but being good requires sincere commitment, discipline and strength. We have to work hard every day just to remain good.
Suzy Kassem
#74. Much shedding of blood, many great actions, and triumphs, toil and perseverance are the end of all things human.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#75. Human beings judge one another by their external actions. God judges them by their moral choices.
C.S. Lewis
#76. There is something horribly hypocritical about passing judgement on another human beings actions from the comfort and safety of an armchair
Daniel Allen Butler
#77. We are affirming human rights for all women and girls, acknowledging the full range of diversity that exists, and detailing actions to prevent violence.
Bella Abzug
#78. [On disagreeing with her husband about his slave-holding:] I cannot give my conscience into the keeping of another human being or submit the actions dictated by my conscience to their will.
Fanny Kemble
#79. We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.
V.S. Pritchett
#80. In Scotland, Catholics have raised their voices against sectarianism and intolerance directed against the Church. Clearly, these actions show that freedom of religious expression, a basic human right, is not upheld in our midst as widely and as completely as it should be.
Keith O'Brien
#81. Every one of us, as human beings, even in a committed relationship, has moments and thoughts and actions that, whether or not they share them with their loved one, tells you, as much as anything, about them as people and their relationship.
Jeff Pinkner
#82. One of the primary reasons why the human brain has evolved to look so far into the future is so that we can take actions in the present that will bring us to a better future rather than a worse one.
Daniel Goldstein
#83. When everything is subject to money, then the scarcity of money makes everything scarce, including the basis of human life and happiness. Such is the life of the slave - one whose actions are compelled by threat to survival. Perhaps the deepest indication of our slavery is the monetization of time.
Charles Eisenstein
#84. When people attempt to rebel against the iron logic of Nature, they come into conflict with the very same principles to which they owe their existence as human beings. Their actions against Nature must lead to their own downfall.
Adolf Hitler
#85. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions. Once again, the fact that some people are hurt is shrugged off because an abstract cause is said to be greater than any human consequences. Once
Michael Crichton
#86. A passion for continual learning, a refined, discerning ear for the moral and ethical consequences of their actions, and an understanding of the purposes of work and human organisations
Warren G. Bennis
#87. Art - the meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.
Lawrence Durrell
#88. There is a Destiny which has the control of our actions, not to be resisted by the strongest efforts of Human Nature.
George Washington
#89. Those words of hers had meant nothing - you could not dismiss [however] a human being so easily.
Agatha Christie
#90. In 1921, a New York rabbi asked Einstein if he believed in God. "I believe in Spinoza's God," he answered, "who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings.
Jim Holt
#91. Nothing is more human than substituting the quantity of words and actions for their character. But using imprecise words is very similar to using lots of words, for the more imprecise a word is, the greater the area it covers.
Robert Musil
#92. She was one who wished to believe the human motives precede actions for she was (she had always been) a rational individual yet clearly there were times (was this one of those times?) when actions might precede motives and even render them useless.
Joyce Carol Oates
#93. Human beings have the largest impact on the overall health of the planet, and therefore we should be more responsible with how we live our lives. All of the tragedies that we are experiencing today can be linked back to the actions of human beings.
Joseph P. Kauffman
#94. Act so that the effects of your actions are compatible with the permanence of genuine human life.
Hans Jonas
#95. The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form.
Daniel Webster
#96. In the United States, constitutional guarantees of religious liberty protect the church from actions that might otherwise be considered abusive or in violation of laws in human trafficking or labor standards.
Lawrence Wright
#97. Growing up I often wondered how the world would be today if, since the beginning of human life, every person acted as I did.
Criss Jami
#98. He is a curious avatar. Passion and pain, made manifest. The dreams he had are gone. All that is left is this unflinching need to prove the world false. Does he truly understand his own actions? Or does he merely flail about as marionettes do without skilled hands to guide them?
Grant Smuts
#99. Every human must take responsibility for his actions.
Jalal Talabani
#100. We might think then of rhetorical production as an extended intentional state in which rhetoric emerges from the dynamic, ongoing intra-actions of human and nonhuman entities all projecting toward each other.
Anonymous
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