Social Action Quotes

#1. Social action, just like physical action, is steered by perception.

Kurt Lewin

#2. Christian life is not a life divided between times for action and times for contemplation. No. Real social action is a way of contemplation, and real contemplation is the core of social action.

Henri J.M. Nouwen

#3. Exploration of the natural world begins in early childhood, flourishes in middle childhood, and continues in adolescence as a pleasure and a source of strength for social action.

David Sobel

#4. I'm all for Spencer. He's sincere, idealistic, and a good preacher. I just don't believe that social action is the main business of the Church."
"Then what is?"
"Salvation.

Catherine Marshall

#5. I would never commit the positively anti-social action of robbing a bank, or worse still, working in one.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#6. Rhetoric is communication that attempts to coordinate social action...Its goal is to influence human choices on specific matters that require immediate attention

Gerard Hauser

#7. To suggest social action for the public good to the city London is like discussing The Origin of Species to a Bishop sixty years ago.

John Maynard Keynes

#8. Social action must be animated by a vision of a future society, and by explicit judgments of value concerning the character of this future society.

Noam Chomsky

#9. You need more fact in the dangerous art of giving presents than in any other social action.

William Bolitho

#10. Facebook is not very good at dealing with named groups; they're not very good at saying, 'We've got this book club and I'm a member and you're not.' But membership is one of the precursors to a lot of social action.

Clay Shirky

#11. The issue of attention permeates the Gospels, yet the messages of the modern church swing wildly between the twin poles of hollow social action and shallow, myopic entertainment.

Peter Denbo Haskins

#12. Too long have I confined myself in Miltonic isolation and meditation. It is clearly time for me to step boldly into our society, not in the boring, passive manner of the Myrna Minkoff school of social action, but with great style and zest.

John Kennedy Toole

#13. The gospel is not about ... pie-in-the-sky when they die ... It is imperative that the up and coming generation recognize that the biblical Jesus was committed to the realization of a new social order in this world ... Becoming a Christian, therefore, is a call to social action.

Tony Campolo

#14. I have observed over the years that the unanticipated consequences of social action are always more important, and usually less agreeable, than the intended consequences.

Irving Kristol

#15. The distance between taking social action and having the knowledge is as wide as the mouth of the Mississippi.

Mort Sahl

#16. [The Dalai Lama ] says Western traditions can teach Tibetans a lot about social action, and he thinks some Christians are very good at that.

Pico Iyer

#17. The reconciling gospel is always at the forefront of the church's social action, because a full belly is not better than a reconciled soul.

Matt Chandler

#18. A good education is a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, because each enrich the other. The accumulation of knowledge, while fascinating in itself, is not sufficient without action

Howard Zinn

#19. [Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.

Jurgen Habermas

#20. For that reason the simple test of the slogan 'Consume Less' as a basis for social action on the environment would be to tell it to the blacks in the ghetto. The message will not be very well received for there are many people in this country who consume less than is needed to sustain a decent life.

Barry Commoner

#21. It seemed a fitting way to end my teaching career. I had always insisted that a good education was a synthesis of book learning and involvement in social action, that each enriched the other.

Howard Zinn

#22. Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism.

Philip Zimbardo

#23. Maybe I would have become an actor. I was a very outgoing kid, but being in the hospital - being outside of social action for so long - turned me into an observer. Actually, right after I got out of the hospital, I did start writing a novel, but the book was so transparently about me that I stopped.

Brent Runyon

#24. 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

#25. When I am once again whole, I shall visit those factory people; I have deep and abiding convictions concerning social action.

Anonymous

#26. The greatest religious problem today is how to be both a mystic and a militant; in other words how to combine the search for an expansion of inner awareness with effective social action, and how to feel one's true identity in both.

Ursula K. Le Guin

#27. My entry into the environmental arena was through the issue that so dramatically - and destructively - demonstrates the link between science and social action: nuclear weapons.

Barry Commoner

#28. The power of recognition is one of the strongest forces for stimulating human and social action.

Lowell Milken

#29. It was the Sermon on the Mount, rather than a doctrine of passive resistance, that initially inspired the Negroes of Montgomery to dignified social action. It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love. As

Martin Luther King Jr.

#30. In Judaism social action is religiousness, and religiousness implies social action.

Leo Baeck

#31. Reconciliation requires changes of heart and spirit, as well as social and economic change. It requires symbolic as well as practical action.

Malcolm Fraser

#32. Only in action can you fully realize the forces operative in social behavior. That is why I am an experimentalist.

Stanley Milgram

#33. My view of the charity world is that compared with business, there is too much talk, way too many meetings and expert panels and blue-ribbon commissions, and not enough action. Or as an Australian friend of mine once opined: "Sometimes you just have to have a go and get on with it, mate!".

John Wood

#34. For every scientific (or engineering) action, there is an equal and opposite social reaction.

Norman Ralph Augustine

#35. We know that Medicare is set to go bankrupt in 2024 with no action, and social security is set to be insolvent by 2037.

Joe Heck

#36. Churchill used words for different purposes: to argue for moral and political causes, to advocate courses of action in the social, national and international spheres, and to tell the story of his own life and that of Britain and its place in the world.

Winston S. Churchill

#37. Since you are an integral part of a social system, let every act of yours contribute to the harmonization of social life. Any action that is not related directly or remotely to this social aim disturbs your life, and destroys your unity.

Marcus Aurelius

#38. Contrary to the utopian rhetoric of social media enthusiasts, the Internet often makes the jump from deliberation to participation even more difficult, thwarting collective action under the heavy pressure of never-ending internal debate.

Evgeny Morozov

#39. You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.

Jessica Mitford

#40. If philosophy gets you lost in the labyrinth of symbols that distance us from reality, then it is part of the problem; if it motivates positive action that can create a better world, philosophy is usually a gift.

Oli Anderson

#41. What do I want in a good fantasy book? Court politics and social interactions based around houses and cities. Powerful women and devious men. Drama and action with emotional ramifications. Frocks. Kissing. Swords. An intense impression of history in the world-building.

Tansy Rayner Roberts

#42. The medium, or process, of our time - electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action.

Marshall McLuhan

#43. As to the meaning of "corporate social responsibility," Friedman and I would agree: If a certain action improves the corporation's bottom line, there's no point in labeling it "socially responsible." It's just good business.

Robert Reich

#44. Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

Patricia Hill Collins

#45. It is incumbent upon us to do what we can, even if we cannot do much.

David Smail

#46. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.

Isaac Asimov

#47. Occupying the bottom end of the inequality ladder, and becoming a 'collateral victim' of a human action or a natural disaster, interact the way the opposite poles of magnets do: they tend to gravitate towards each other.

Zygmunt Bauman

#48. When people align around shared political, social, economic or environmental values, and take collective action, thinking and behavior that compromises the lives of millions of people around the world can truly change.

Simon Mainwaring

#49. We've got to make change our national pastime and hold protests more regularly than weekend parties.

Rivera Sun

#50. No real social change has ever been
brought about without a revolution -
Revolution is but thought carried into action.
Every effort for progress, for enlightenment,
for science, for religious, political, and
economic liberty, emanates from the minority,
and not from the mass.

Emma Goldman

#51. The more positive action you take grounded in presence (stillness), the more effective you will become in your line of duty, work or social life.

Christopher Dines

#52. With action movies, that's just fun stuff for me. That's me being a kid again. Same with 'The Best of Me' and these romantic dramas. It's such a freedom from reality and social constructions. You get to just have fun and play and be in a movie.

Luke Bracey

#53. When community action was put into federal law in the early sixties as part of the effort to combat poverty and social injustice, I supported it intellectually.

Barney Frank

#54. Questions about God's existence, self disclosure, saving action and almighty power reminded me of my inadequacies. For me the theo in theology had become little more than a question mark. I could confidently discuss philosophy, psychology and social change, but God made me uneasy.

Thomas C. Oden

#55. And Habermas: mutual understanding in unrestrained communicative action unfolded by rationality is the omega point of individual and social evolution itself.

Ken Wilber

#56. I'm looking at some comedic horror films because I have often been accused of being too dark. I'm not dark, not compared with 'Saw' or anything like that. So I'm looking at live-action horror films, but not slasher ones - ones that have humor and maybe some social satire.

Henry Selick

#57. In order to break free from the chains that bind, one must take whatever action they can to disconnect internally from the larger systems of oppression, of which the family unit is merely a microcosm.

Sil Lai Abrams

#58. There's good art and there's bad art. A lot of action films are bad art, but Paul Greengrass showed us with the Bourne films that it's possible to make an action film with a political, social conscience.

Joe Wright

#59. I think we'll build a consensus for action on Social Security reform which will reduce that long-term unfunded obligation and put the system on a sustainable basis.

John W. Snow

#60. Our situation is intolerable, but what's worse
is to sit here and do nothing.

Rita Dove

#61. Without this original, pre-political, and pre-social community, no common project could ever come to exist. For, no project of this kind can be formed independently from its rootedness in the organic structure of desire and action.

Michel Henry

#62. Now you can see today why the world is in trouble. What is the social field today? The social field is the planet, and there isn't a single system of action that has to do with the planet. They all have to do with one interest group or another.

Joseph Campbell

#63. English literature is a kind of training in social ethics. English trains you to handle a body of information in a way that is conducive to action.

Marilyn Butler

#64. Human beings with all their faults and strengths constitute the mechanism of a social movement. They must make mistakes and learn from them, make more mistakes and learn anew. They must taste defeat as well as success, and discover how to live with each. Time and action are the teachers.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#65. The role of social media is critical because it helps to spread cognitive dissonance by connecting thought leaders and activists to ordinary citizens rapidly expanding the network of people who become willing to take action.

Simon Mainwaring

#66. They had no previous connection whatever with Connemara; but they saw connections where others who should have seen them simply looked the other way.

Joseph O'Connor

#67. Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.

John Dewey

#68. [On affirmative action:] Universities give a boost in admissions for other factors besides race, factors that bring no social benefit, such as athletic ability, celebrity of parents, and alumni connections. It is remarkable how little agitation there is against those practices.

Barbara Bergmann

#69. Doesn't it seem more reasonable to take action to heal the social pathology that generates crime than to use gun control to blow another political toe off American liberalism during each election cycle?

Joe Bageant

#70. I'm not an intellectual - Fascism has no need of that. What is wanted is the deed. Theory derives from action. What our corporate state demands from us is comprehension of the social forces - of history. You

Philip K. Dick

#71. The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the above principles then immediately go into action, a process which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization.

Robert Anton Wilson

#72. Boycott is a widely understood form of social, economic, and political action.

Steve Crawshaw

#73. In many guilds artisans struck for higher pay and shorter hours. In an age when social conditions were regarded as fixed, such action was revolutionary.

Barbara W. Tuchman

#74. Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker.

Kevin Mitnick

#75. Anarchism ... stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral.

Emma Goldman

#76. Autonomous state actions will regularly take forms that attempt to reinforce the authority, political longevity, and social control of the state.

Theda Skocpol

#77. When I write provocative social and cultural criticism that causes readers to stretch their minds, to think beyond set paradigms, I think of that work as love in action. While it may challenge, disturb and at times even frighten or enrage readers, love is always the place where I begin and end.

Bell Hooks

#78. When James Cameron brought me the script, which I developed with both Cameron and Jay Cocks, I wanted to make it a thriller, an action film, but with a conscience, and I found that it had elements of social realism.

Kathryn Bigelow

#79. Sorry, Sage. Last I checked, you aren't an expert in
social matters ... "
"At least I take action. You? You let the world go by
without you. You have no spine. You don't fight back."
"You don't know the first thing about me, Adrian Ivashkov. I fight back plenty.

Richelle Mead

#80. There is not one single social or economic principle or concept in the philosophy of the Russian Bolshevik which has not been realized, carried into action, and enshrined in immutable laws a million years ago by the white ant.

Winston Churchill

#81. Social networking technology didn't really exist until 2004-2005. I had the idea to use this technology to bridge this gap between a general interest in addressing social issues and the practical action.

Ben Rattray

#82. I cannot see that keeping the status quo intact would help in any way to solve the problems of inequality or suffering in this world. I would go for taking action towards change instead of accepting the inevitable.

Elina Juusola

#83. Certain barriers do require a critical mass of action at the right time to overcome the inertia that is greater than incremental change.

David Jaber

#84. Forceful actions arising from erroneous beliefs often create social effects that confirm the misbeliefs

Albert Bandura

#85. It is my expectation that Teacher Education for Democracy and Social Justice will become a rich resource for continuing this multi-layered conversation-from democratic belief to democratic action-that is the hallmark of educational renewal.

John Goodlad

#86. Communion in faith, in the intimacy of meaning, cannot remain purely conceptual; it can maintain its vivifying energy only if it associates with communion in speech and action within a common space of social and cultural references. Faith needs culture.

Tariq Ramadan

#87. Interface, of the resonant interval as 'where the action is', whether chemical, psychic or social, involves touch.

Marshall McLuhan

#88. I think, you know, architecture should not just be something that follows up on events but be a leader of events ... by implementing an architectural action, you actually are making a transformation in the social fabric and in the political fabric. Architecture becomes an instigator.

Lebbeus Woods

#89. Sitting on the sidelines in our interconnected world is not a sufficient response.

Dillon Burroughs

#90. Wars and conflicts begin in the mind, then they are expressed in words and then executed through physical action, so personal transformation is intricately connected with the social and political transformation.

Satish Kumar

#91. In college, I was always disappointed by lectures that covered social problems but failed to identify what I could do to change them. Part of the problem was that many professors simply didn't believe they had a role in converting awareness to action.

Ben Rattray

#92. Education without direction is a one-sided social value. Direct action without education is a meaningless expression of pure energy.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#93. This is the gravest danger that today threatens civilization: State intervention; the absorption of all spontaneous social effort by the State, that is to say, of spontaneous historical action, which in the long run sustains, nourishes, and impels human destinies.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

#94. When we fracture our potential for united action and divide ourselves along social, political, economic, or religious lines, we diminish our power.

Helen LaKelly Hunt

#95. Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.

William Blum

#96. Today's perfect right hooks always include three characteristics: They make the call to action simple and easy to understand. They are perfectly crafted for mobile, as well as all digital devices. They respect the nuances of the social network for which you are making the content. I'll

Gary Vaynerchuk

#97. Action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics. (U.S. Social Worker, 1860-1935)

Jane Addams

#98. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#99. Revolution is but thought carried into action.

Emma Goldman

#100. Let there be freedom from perturbations with respect to the things which come from the external cause; and let there be justice in the things done by virtue of the internal cause, that is, let there be movement and action terminating in this, in social acts, for this is according to thy nature.

Marcus Aurelius