This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In the heat of [social] movements brains are set stirring with new ideas which live on through quieter times, waiting for another opportunity to ignite into action and change the world around us.
What action would promote happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble, and consequently no imperative respect it is possible which should, in the strict sense, command to do what makes happy; because happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless.
Action | Consequences | Happy | Imagination | Reason | Respect | Sense | Respect | Happiness |
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
It is surprising how practical duty enriches the fancy and the heart, and action clears and deepens the affections.
Like flakes of snow that fall imperceptibly upon the earth, the seemingly unimportant events of life succeed one another. As snowflakes gather, so our habits are formed. No single flake that is added to the pile produces a sensible change. No single action creates, however it may exhibit a man's character. But as the tempest hurls the avalanche down the mountain and overwhelms the inhabitant and his habitation, so passion, acting on the elements of mischief which pernicious habits have brought together, may overthrow the edifice of truth and virtue.
Action | Change | Character | Earth | Events | Life | Life | Man | Passion | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
Nothing can be more destructive to vigor of action than protracted, anxious fluctuation, through resolutions adopted, rejected, resumed, and suspended, and nothing causes a greater expense of feeling. A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself; he is as a wave of the sea, or a feather in the air which every breeze blows about as it listeneth.
There is no action so slight, nor so mean, but it may be done to a great purpose, and ennobled therefore; nor is any purpose so great but that slight actions may help it, and may be so done as to help it much, most especially that chief of all purposes, the pleasing of God.
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection... The only purpose of which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
Action | Harm | Liberty | Mankind | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Will |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
The margin between that which men naturally do, and that which they can do, is so great that a system which urges men on to action and develops individual enterprise and initiative is preferable, in spite of the wastes that necessarily attend their process.
Action | Individual | Initiative | Men | System |
Anger is fuel. We feel it and we want to do something... Anger is meant to be listened to... Anger is not the action itself. It is action's invitation.
Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.
Action | Depression |
Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exist at the appropriate time.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.
Action | Life | Life | Neglect | Search | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Value |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The consciousness of having done a splendid action is itself a sufficient reward.
Action | Consciousness | Reward |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Every generous action loves the public view; yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it.
Action | Consciousness | Public | Virtue | Virtue |
Man’s action is enclosed in God’s action, but it is still real action.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Action and reflection should ideally complement and support each other. Action by itself is blind, reflection impotent.
Action | Reflection |