Top 100 Quotes About Inaction
#1. Defeat appears to me preferable to total Inaction.
John Adams
#2. If he acts, if he doesn't, it's meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.
Jesse Ball
#5. The problem with all these tired excuses for inaction is that it suggests a fundamental lack of faith in American business and American ingenuity.
Barack Obama
#6. We have to remind ourselves that we are not the transitory body, we are not the person who is having experiences, we are not affected by action or inaction.
Frederick Lenz
#7. The politics of partisanship and the resulting inaction and excuses have paralyzed decision-making, primarily at the federal level, and the big issues of the day are not being addressed, leaving our future in jeopardy.
Michael Bloomberg
#8. Inaction quickly consumes a lifetime. Be curious, be bold, pay close attention to the world in front of you. And start trying stuff.
Ben Falk
#9. In dangerous times, there is no sin greater than inaction.
Dan Brown
#10. Not doing anything can be worse than doing the wrong thing.
Alexandra Potter
#11. There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy
#13. Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you
want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegia
#14. First, imagine taking the potentially regret - producing path of inaction. Then imagine what the very best outcome would be were you to take this risk. By picturing both scenarios in advance, you can avoid the regret of what might have been.
Wayne Dyer
#16. Free yourself from the need to blame others. There are two reasons that you are where you are right now; action or inaction.
Steve Maraboli
#17. Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or weak ... Non-violence is hard work.
Cesar Chavez
#18. Cynicism does not cause inaction..
David Wong
#19. To do anything, it is first necessary to be doing nothing.
Nancy Hale
#20. We often don't realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.
Jacqueline Novogratz
#21. You have only to rest in inaction and things will transform themselves. Smash your form and body, spit out hearing and eyesight, forget you are a thing among other things, and you may join in great unity with the deep and boundless.
Zhuangzi
#22. A bright man of conviction and action is a beacon to his country,
but a flash light to the scurrying of inaction, ego, and insecurity of lesser men.
Daniel S. Green
#23. In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past - sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories.
George Eliot
#24. There is nothing more explosive than a skilled population condemned to inaction. Such a population is likely to become a hotbed of extremism and intolerance, and be receptive to any proselytizing ideology, however absurd and vicious, which promises vast action.
Eric Hoffer
#25. There is no such a rule that patience leads to salvation! Patience can lead to salvation or it can lead to disaster. Every inaction or every action is open to all the possibilities!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#26. Fear was the worst evil ever to plague a man, for with it came hesitation and with that, inaction, failure, death.
Melissa McPhail
#27. Use the losses and failures of the past as a reason for action, not inaction.
Charles J. Givens
#28. Revolutionaries - true revolutionaries - are aggressive, ruthless, and generally seize the main chance, as William Henry Drayton did when he saw that stump-speaking was getting him nowhere. But defenders of the status quo tend toward caution and legalisms and inaction until it is too late
John Buchanan
#29. One has to speak out and stand up for one's convictions. Inaction at a time of conflagration is inexcusable.
Mahatma Gandhi
#30. It often takes more courage to be a passenger than a driver.
E.L. Konigsburg
#31. The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.
Theodore Roosevelt
#32. If a branch is too rigid, it will break. Resist, and you will perish. Know how to yield, and you will survive.
Liezi
#33. Inaction that results from indulgence is Procrastination. Inaction that results from intention is Patience.
Rory Vaden
#35. Not acting is a policy. Not acting is a choice. Not acting brings its own consequences and you have to weight cost of action against cost of inaction. And for many people across the political spectrum the cost of inaction is rising too high.
Liam Fox
#36. We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.
Bill Gates
#37. It's when the 'international community' expresses 'concern' about your 'situation' that your situation is well and truly fucked.
Michael D. Weiss
#38. The failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#39. A present moment in time, is defined by the observation of our actions, as much as it is undefined by the intent of our inaction.
Vincent De Villeperdue
#40. The breeding ground of fear is procrastination and inaction. We overcome them not by preparation, but by taking action.
Debasish Mridha
#42. Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.
Farley Mowat
#43. Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we're fighting a war on terror.
Bill Kristol
#44. Every action or inaction has an impact-good or bad-upon our surroundings, and anything we do today will have an impact on the lives of our grandchildren.
Ted Turner
#45. Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying
that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#46. While we cannot accurately predict the course of climate change in the coming decades, the risks we run if we don't change our course are enormous. Prudent risk management does not equate uncertainty with inaction.
Steven Chu
#47. Inaction may be the biggest form of action.
Jerry Brown
#50. I think it is important for people to understand that there are real serious economic costs and real serious economic damages associated with inaction on climate change.
Naomi Oreskes
#51. To live strikes me as a metaphysical mistake of matter, a dereliction of inaction.
Fernando Pessoa
#52. 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs sparked a rising wave of consumer indignation. But ... it takes a major catastrophe to carry legal and enforcement action over the hump of lethargy and inaction ... Today, nearly forty years later, the situation is worse, not better.
John Fuller
#53. Oh, the others will talk and plan and make oaths and promises, but there are precious few fuckers who will do.
Ian McGuire
#54. There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
John F. Kennedy
#55. There are many roads to prosperity, but one must be taken. Inaction leads nowhere.
Robert Zoellick
#56. Inhumanity is not only perpetrated by the vitriolic actions of those who are bad, but also perpetrated by the vitiating inaction of those who are good.
Deena Guzder
#57. Procrastination most often arises from a sense that there is too much to do, and hence no single aspect of the to-do worth doing ... Underneath this rather antic form of action-as-inaction is the much more unsettling question whether anything is worth doing at all.
Mark Kingwell
#58. Like hatred, guilt can't be locked in the silence of forgetting, without taking part of your soul with it.
Shannon L. Alder
#59. Fear is a wet blanket that smothers the fiery passion God deposited in your heart when he formed you. Fear freezes us into inaction. Frozen ideas, frozen souls, frozen bodies can't move, can't dream, can't risk, can't love, and can't live. Fear chains us.
Stasi Eldredge
#60. You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself - without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat.
Anonymous
#61. The consequences of inaction are the things you must face as a result of doing nothing or not enough.
Steven Redhead
#62. Is multilateralism nothing more than a dodge for simple inaction?
Elliott Abrams
#64. You are where you are right now because of the actions you've taken, or maybe, the inaction you've taken.
Steve Maraboli
#66. First of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Isaac Asimov
#68. Heaven forbid we've got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who is engaged in dangerous activity, but we didn't do so simply because of inaction in the Senate.
Barack Obama
#69. Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.
Haile Selassie
#70. It is not error which opposes the progress of truth; it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, every thing which favors inaction.
Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot
#71. If the politics of inaction and delay that have triumphed in this country continues for another decade, then Planetary Purgatory in the likely future facing our country before midcentury - probably in your own lifetime.
Joseph J. Romm
#72. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#73. Climate change has a very high procrastination penalty that just grows with each passing year of inaction - rather like what happens if you don't pay off your credit card. But for climate, there is no such thing as a fresh start from bankruptcy.
William H. Calvin
#74. Complexity should be your excuse for inaction.
Claire North
#75. Fate is nothing but the past in the future. It is only an excuse for inaction.
Omid Banyasad
#76. Politicians must be simple and clear about how their ideas will serve the national cause. We can no longer use the complexity of today's problems as an excuse for inaction, rhyme or rhetoric that does not meet the challenges before us.
Alan Siegel
#77. I know in my heart the dream will be realized. I choose to believe. And choosing is a powerful thing. It's available to you at every moment. You can choose understanding over anger, believing over nonbelieving, action over inaction. It gives meaning to every choice we make.
Yolanda King
#78. All choices are fraught with peril, but inaction is the most perilous of all.
Allan Frewin Jones
#79. Inaction, contrary to its reputation for being a refuge, is neither safe nor comfortable.
Madeleine M. Kunin
#80. Contentment is never the outcome of fulfillment, of achievement, or of the possession of things; it is not born of action or inaction. It comes with the fullness of what is, not in the alteration of it.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#81. Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.
Gary Ryan Blair
#82. The only thing between you and success is your thinking. Defeatist thoughts are the mother of inaction.
Iimani David
#83. Just as iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction spoil the intellect.
Leonardo Da Vinci
#84. Those who claim to be on the side of good yet do nothing to fight evil are on the side of evil.
Joyce Rachelle
#85. Revised regulations will never suppress federal workplace retaliation; nor will it cure the inaction of an EEOC official when justice demands fair, prompt and judicious decision-making.
Tanya Ward Jordan
#86. We must create our own world or we will die from inaction
Robert Greene
#87. Acceptance does not mean inaction; acceptance is actually acknowledging the present situation.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
#90. A robot may do nothing that, to its knowledge, will harm a human being; nor, through inaction, knowingly allow a human being to come to harm.
Isaac Asimov
#91. The action or inaction of any government does not negate the Personal Responsibility of the citizens.
Sunday Adelaja
#92. The Leadership Seduction of storytelling invites self-pity, exaggerates one's importance, and encourages inaction.
Catherine Robinson-Walker
#93. You had decided to take the action, whatever it was." "Yes." "Yes. It involved perhaps a period of inaction." "Of comparative inaction - yes." "Of suspense, shall we say?" "Yes - of suspense, certainly." "Possibly
Dorothy L. Sayers
#94. Even non-change is imperceivable change, because inaction will slowly change you from what you could have been, to what you never will be.
Bryant McGill
#95. You did what you felt was right, for you, for that moment," he said. "There is no shame in that. Learn from it, from these doubts and feelings and fears. Next time, make a different decision. Just remember to always decide. Inaction is death.
Annie Bellet
#97. One who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, is intelligent among men.
Bhagavad Gita
#98. Failure or success do not happen by accident, they are the compound interest of action or inaction.
Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
#99. Nothing wilts faster than a laurel rested upon.
Mary Kay Ash
#100. For us to ignore by inaction the slaughter of American civilians and American soldiers, whether in nightclubs or airline terminals, is simply not in the American tradition. Self-defense is not only our right, it is our duty.
Ronald Reagan
