Going to church does not make you a Christian any more than going to the garage makes you a car.
Lawrence J. Peter (1919-1990) American educator, management theorist
(Attributed)
Quotations about:
action
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Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want.
Joseph Wood Krutch (1893-1970) American educator, writer, critic, naturalist
The Twelve Seasons, “February” (1949)
(Source)
Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
Dave Barry (b. 1947) American humorist
“25 Things I Have Learned In 50 Years,” #25 (1997)
As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.
Edward Abbey (1927-1989) American anarchist, writer, environmentalist
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, ch. 4, “Life and Death and All That” (1989)
(Source)
It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, “Always do what you are afraid to do.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Heroism,” Essays: First Series (1841)
Act nothing in furious Passion; it’s putting to Sea in a Storm.
Thomas Fuller (1654-1734) English physician, preacher, aphorist, writer
Introductio ad Prudentiam, Vol. 1, # 365 (1725)
(Source)
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Greek philosopher
Nicomachean Ethics [Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια] (c. 325 BC) (paraphrase)
(Source)
Variants:Not actually Aristotle, but a summary by Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers (1926), ch. 2 "Aristotle and Greek Science," sec. 7 "Ethics and the Nature of Happiness" (1926):
- "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."
- "We are what we repeatedly do, therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit."
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; "these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions"; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: "the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life ... for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy."
The quoted phrases are from the Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, ch. 4; Book 1, ch. 7.
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
Eric Hoffer (1902-1983) American writer, philosopher, longshoreman
The Passionate State of Mind, Aphorism 176 (1955)
(Source)
Every evil in the bud is easily crushed: as it grows older, it becomes stronger.
[Omne malum nascens facile opprimitur; inveteratum fit pleurumque robustius.]
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
Philippicae [Philippics], No. 5, ch. 11 / sec. 28 (5.28) (1 Jan AD 43)
(Source)
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translations:
Every evil is easily crushed at its birth; when it has become of long standing, it usually gets stronger.
[tr. Yonge (1903)]
Every evil is easily crushed at its birth; become inveterate it as a rule gathers strength.
[tr. Ker (1926)]
Hampden, on the other hand, was for vigorous and decisive measures. When he drew the sword, as Clarendon has well aid, he threw away the scabbard. He had shown that he knew better than any public man of his time how to value and how to practice moderation. He knew that the essence of war is violence, and that moderation in war is imbecility.
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859) English writer and politician
“John Hampden,” Essays Contributed to the Edinburgh Review, Vol. 1 (1843)
(Source)
Review of Lord Nugent, Some Memorials of John Hampden, His Party, and His Times (1831).
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto 2, st. 76 (1818)
(Source)
One time I figured out this: if you aren’t brave, it doesn’t matter what other virtues you have, because you aren’t going to act them out. What good does it do to be able to see truth if you’re too chickenshit to act on the basis of what you see? I finally reduced all human virtues to one: bravery.
