Inaction Quotes

Acceptance does not mean inaction. We may need to respond, strongly at times…From a peaceful center we can respond instead of react. Unconscious reactions create problems. Considered responses bring peace. With a peaceful heart whatever happens can be met with wisdom…Peace is not weak; it is unshakable.

One’s only real regret in life is the failure to act.

Laws will not eliminate prejudice from the hearts of human beings. But that is no reason to allow prejudice to continue to be enshrined in our laws – to perpetuate injustice through inaction.

Inaction is cowardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind.

In any bureaucracy, there’s a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction.

Fruitless striving breeds less despair than inaction.

Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

I came to the University of Chicago on the morning of January 2, 1932. I wasn’t yet a graduate of high school for another few months. And that was about the low point of the Herbert Hoover/Andrew Mellon phase after October of 1929. That’s quite a number of years to have inaction.

No, I have no desire for riches. Honest poverty and a conscience, torpid through virtuous inaction, are more to me than corner lots and praise.

We constantly change the world, even by our inaction. Therefore, let us change it responsibly.

I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.

If an economy in the doldrums could drift indefinitely, the price of government inaction might be graver by far than the consequences of bold unorthodoxy.

Sometimes the highest form of action is inaction.

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.

Actions speak louder than words. And sometimes inaction speaks louder than both of them.

The universe may be tenderly indifferent to our fate, but we shouldn’t be. We are our brothers’ keepers. There is right, and there is wrong. There are consequences to our actions or inactions. Disregard can be an act of violence.

Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction?

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.

The time is out of joint : O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!

As Albert Camus wrote, the doctor’s role is as a witness – to witness authentically the reality of humanity, and to speak out against the horrors of political inaction… The only crime equaling inhumanity is the crime of indifference, silence, and forgetting.

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.

Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. We are not saying you can’t change the world, right wrongs or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don’t fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it.

Boredom is that awful state of inaction when the very medicine – that is, activity – which could solve it, is seen as odious.

Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren’t actually angry at the president about inaction.

It was lights, camera, inaction.

There is no excuse for inaction in the face of economic injustice.

Just as iron rusts from disuse… even so does inaction spoil the intellect.

It is not error which opposes the progress of truth; it is indolence, obstinacy, the spirit of routine, every thing which favors inaction.

My father was a local radio celebrity in the Albany area while I was growing up. That was his dream when he was a boy. I learned from him that some dreams are attainable and the penalty for inaction is regret.

The only thing between you and success is your thinking. Defeatist thoughts are the mother of inaction.

Once we know and are aware, we are responsible for our action and our inaction. We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.

Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

We cannot allow our fears and our disappointments to lead us into silence and into inaction. Because this country that God has blessed us with, it is worth fighting for.

You can’t remain inactive in the face of injustice without, to some extent, being guilty of it.

Violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his inferiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect

Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.

Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.

With the continued support of citizens who refuse to accept inaction at the expense of future generations, we will lead the world toward a sustainable future.

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.

A sedentary life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit. Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.

The most ominous of fallacies – the belief that things can be kept static by inaction

A computer shall not harm your work or, through inaction, allow your work to come to harm.

We often don’t realize what our action & our inaction do to people we think we will never see & never know.

The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.

Take the word of experience, I speak the truth: inaction is safest in danger.

First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I’m not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I’m not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I’m not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me.

Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good to do no harm.

While Americans have heard of Darfur and think we should be doing more there, they aren’t actually angry at the president about inaction

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Drastic action can be costly, but it can be less expensive than continuing inaction.

The sleeping fox catches no poultry.

Sometimes inaction is worse than action.

You cannot give up on the American dream. We cannot allow our fears and our disappointments to lead us into silence and into inaction.

A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.

I think this is the biggest lesson a president or any of us who has responsibility to govern have to learn: There are always consequences to actions that you take. There are consequences to inaction.

My mother always told me that inaction is not an option. And neither is going it alone.

Action or inaction are both forms of leadership and standard setting.

To the man who can perfectly practice inaction, all things are possible.

To do anything, it is first necessary to be doing nothing.

Inaction without more is not tantamount to choice.

It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.

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.

The failures of the past must not be an excuse for the inaction of the present and the future.

Surely our inaction with respect to Syria is a poor precedent if we’re fighting a war on terror.

As a young victim of bullying and then, later, a vindictive perpetrator of violence myself, I’ve known both sides of this experience, and I tried very hard in the writing here to be as absolutely honest as I possibly could, to not romanticize myself or my past actions or cowardly inactions in any way.

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.

Man works for an object. Remove that object and you reduce him into inaction.

Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can’t afford the risk of inaction.

I sense that conservatives have largely already tuned out to the coming elections, after six years of burgeoning federal spending and inaction on key issues, such as immigration. The Republican Party has become the party of the government status quo, and conservatives see no reason to reward it with their votes.

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.

And to those who would choose the safety of inaction over the danger of taking a stand, I have this to say:
You bloody cowards. May you have the world that you deserve.

In this context, I believe it is an imperative for the new President to select and install his team as quickly as possible, and this does not imply that he must or should appoint members of the ‘other’ party to his Cabinet, which could contribute to inaction and inefficiency.

Hundreds of investors ask me questions each year about the dilemmas they confront. Their worst problem? Uncertainty. They are traumatized and become emotional or confused to the state of inaction. Even worse, they try to solve a short-term problem in a way that hurts them financially in the long run.

I am sympathetic to developing countries’ concerns: because of our emissions it’s their crops that will disappear; because of our inaction, it’s their fields that turn to desert…

Procrastinatio n will delay your change!!! Today is a very good day to change; don’t let YOU stop yourself from growing!

True prayer is not a prelude to inaction.

Do not call procrastination laziness.В Call it fear.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It’s an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.

Any action is better than no action at all.

How do you defend inaction in the face of crisis? How is that defensible for anybody?

In the quest for comparative advantage, investment will flow towards those countries that can offer more output for fewer emissions. Inaction will cost jobs. Action will support jobs.

Change quotes were meant to move us from inaction to action.

Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying–that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire.

Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.

Awareness isn’t passive. It directly leads to action (or inaction).

We need to give thought, but we also need to take action. You need to dream without just being a dreamer.

Is multilateralism nothing more than a dodge for simple inaction?

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.

If you know but do not do, you are a very unhappy person indeed.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation… even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.

Our inner beliefs trigger failure before it happens. They sabotage lasting change by canceling its possibility. We employ these beliefs as articles of faith to justify our inaction and then wish away the result. I call them belief triggers.

Life is insanely robust, though we can make species go extinct, and this is the bad thing. So I always make the point that you can’t say, ‘Is it too late?’ That is the terrible question, because either answer promotes inaction. If it’s too late, you don’t need to act; if it’s not too late, you don’t need to act.

There are times when the most practical thing is to lie down.

Stand still, close your eyes and listen; in the silence you can hear the cries of pain and low moans of anguish of animals waiting to die… do everything you can even if today it is just one small thing. There are no excuses for inaction, despair, egotism, or petulance that matter to the animals.

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

the touchstone of a free act – from the decision to get out of bed in the morning or take a walk in the afternoon to the highest resolutions by which we bind ourselves for the future – is always that we know that we could also have left undone what we actually did.

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.

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.

Our actions – and inaction – touch people every day, people we may never know and never meet.

There is nothing I fear so much as idleness, the want of occupation, inactivity, the lethargy of the faculties; when the body is idle, the spirit suffers painfully.

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

Grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.

The master action, to move forward is a form of inaction; being still and quiet.

Ignorance can be improved; willful ignorance and inaction is inexcusable.

But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.

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.

Years of government inaction on air pollution has got people thinking that the state cannot even protect basic public goods like clean air.

The price of inaction is far greater than the cost of making a mistake.

Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.

I’d rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Action always beats inaction.

Inaction may be the biggest form of action.

How despicable is that humanity, which can be contented to pity, where it might assuage!

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

Acceptance does not mean inaction; acceptance is actually acknowledging the present situation.

Inaction and indecision in the present is because of fear of consequences of the future.

Action cures fear, inaction creates terror.

The Western media is a Ministry of Truth that operates full-time in support of the artificial existence that Westerners live inside The Matrix where Westerners exist without thought. Considering their inaptitude and inaction, Western peoples might as well not exist.

If you cannot commit several hours per week to maintain the liberty that others afforded you, then you, by your inaction and silent voice, abet those who seek to destroy it.

One has to speak out and stand up for one’s convictions. Inaction at a time of conflagration is inexcusable.

It requires a certain kind of bravery, I suppose, to choose the status quo. There’s a certain boldness to inaction.

Our actions – and inaction – touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe.

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?

Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.

A miscalculation is not negligence, nor prudence a crime. I am a scientist. I base my action or inaction upon probability and evidence. There is a reason we call science a discipline! Inferior minds bolt or build pyres to roast the witches in their midst!

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

Every action (or inaction) involves a choice between what is more important and what is less important.

All choices are fraught with peril, but inaction is the most perilous of all.

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.

Consolation has been wrongly reviled. Consolation is not apathy or inaction. It is not closing one’s eyes to the evils of the world. Rather, consolation is the first step in regaining personal equilibrium and strength, which necessarily precedes the ability to act.

The real test is not whether you avoid failure, because you won’t. It’s whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it. . .

Of the alternatives we face in controlling long-term spending growth, moving Medicare to a voucher system seems only mildly unfortunate – and nothing as compared with a debt-driven economic crisis that could stem from inaction.

Inaction is perhaps the greatest mistake of all.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.