Immediate Action Quotes

• Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.

  George Wald

  Taken, Years, Civilization

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• Excitement must lead to immediate action or you will lose the power of momentum. More dreams die because we fail to seize the moment. Do it now!

  Tony Robbins

  Dream, Momentum, Action

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• Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Inspiring, Photography, Drawing

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Michael L. Sand (1999). “The Mind's Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers”

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• Enthusiasm gives life to what is invisible; and interest to what has no immediate action on our comfort in this world.

  Madame de Stael

  Life, Giving, Inspire

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• The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.

  Ezra Pound

  Work, Thinking, Action

  1920 Letter to James Joyce, 7-8 Jun.

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• All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.

  Walter Bagehot

  Fall, Men, Hunting

  Walter Bagehot (1873). “Physics and Politics: Or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "natural Selection" and "inheritance" to Political Society”, p.186

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• Vision rarely require immediate action. It requires patience.

  Andy Stanley

  Vision, Action

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• If you find yourself saying 'I can't do something', but you know it in your heart of hearts that if you do it, you're going to grow, you're going to be a better person, it's going to contribute to your family or to your kids or to something that matters, and you keep saying 'I can't do it,' there is no question—you must do it. You don't discuss it anymore. You just take immediate action... You do what's necessary.

  Tony Robbins

  Kids, Heart, Finding Yourself

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• It is for us to see the Kingdom of God as always coming, always pressing in on the present, always big with possibility, and always inviting immediate action

  Walter Rauschenbusch

  Kingdoms, Action, Possibility

  Walter Rauschenbusch (2008). “A Gospel for the Social Awakening: Selections from the Writings of Walter Rauschenbusch”, p.45, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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• Most ideas are stillborn and need the breath of life injected into them through definite plans of immediate action. The time to nurse an idea is at the time of its birth. Every minute it lives gives it a better chance of surviving.

  Napoleon Hill

  Ideas, Nurse, Giving

  Napoleon Hill (2015). “Think and grow rich: Brazilian edition”, p.140, CDG Edições e Publicações LTDA

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• The American people overwhelmingly want our troops out of Iraq. They want the federal government to take real and immediate action to combat global warming and to significantly expand support for stem cell research. Democrats almost unanimously support the people's wishes onthese crucial issues. Republicans don't.

  Al Gore

  Real, Government, Cells

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• Trying to cut the deficit too far, too fast isn't working. The government must adopt a steadier, more balanced plan to get our deficit down and take immediate action now to support the economy and create jobs here in Britain.

  Ed Balls

  Jobs, Cutting, Government

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• Poor countries are being forced to deal with an unprecedented health crisis without the means to tackle it . Governments can only show how seriously they are taking this crisis by taking immediate action to provide four million extra health workers and to grant those in need access to affordable medicines.

  Annie Lennox

  Country, Health, Mean

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• ... active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with the love in dreams. Love in dreams thirsts for immediate action, quickly performed, and with everyone watching. Indeed, it will go as far as the giving even of one's life, provided it does not take long but is soon over, as on stage, and eveyone is looking on and praising. Whereas active love is labor and persistence, and for some people, perhaps, a whole science.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Love, Dream, Persistence

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• God knows what possessed me, but having that science book in my hand propelled me to immediate action. So I hit her with it.

  Melina Marchetta

  Book, Hands, Action

  Melina Marchetta (2007). “Looking for Alibrandi”, p.81, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• The slogan offers a counterweight to the general dispersion of thought by holding it fast to a single, utterly succinct and unforgettable expression, one which usually inspires men to immediate action. It abolishes reflection: the slogan does not argue, it asserts and commands.

  Johan Huizinga

  Reflection, Men, Expression

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• Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be - given the devastation it is wreaking - should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.

  Michael Bloomberg

  New York, Cities, Weather

  "Bloomberg Cites Climate Change As He Endorses Obama" by Kate Sheppard, www.motherjones.com. November 1, 2012.

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• That more than 90 per cent of the Indian population should continue to be illiterate even after 175 years of British rule in this country is an intolerable situation which calls for immediate action.

  Syama Prasad Mukherjee

  Country, Years, Population

  Speech delivered at Nagpur University Convocation on 5th December 1936, "Educational Speeches" by Dr. Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, A.Mukherjee & Co. (Private) Ltd., 2 College Square, Kolkata 700 012, 1959.

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• We are in an extremely precarious and urgent situation that compels immediate action

  David Karoly

  Action, Climate Change, Situation

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• We build our personalities laboriously and through many years, and we cannot order fundamental changes just because we might value their utility; no button reading "positive attitude" protrudes from our hearts, and no finger can coerce positivity into immediate action by a single and painless pressing.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Attitude, Reading, Heart

  Stephen Jay Gould (2011). “Full House”, p.47, Harvard University Press

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• Our beliefs about ourselves in relation to the world around us are the roots of our values, and our values determine not only our immediate actions, but also, over the course of time, the form of our society. Our beliefs are increasingly determined by science. Hence it is at least conceivable that what science has been telling us for three hundred years about man and his place in nature could be playing by now an important role in our lives.

  Henry Stapp

  Men, Years, Roots

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• Whoever thought the immediate alternates with the immediate action is not an abstract painter.

  Pierre Alechinsky

  Action, Abstract, Painter

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• As a heavy rainstorm freshens the water of a sluggish or stagnant stream and whips it into immediate action, so does the Pilates Methods purify the bloodstream.

  Joseph Pilates

  Water, Doe, Pilates

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• Every event, or appearance, or accident, which seems to deviate from the ordinary course of nature has been rashly ascribed to the immediate action of the Deity.

  Edward Gibbon

  Religion, Events, Ordinary

  Edward Gibbon, Henry Hart Milman, M. Guizot (François), Sir William Smith (1862). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.15

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• We should stop the non-scientific, pseudo-scientific, and anti-scientific nonsense emanating from the right wing, and start demanding immediate action to reduce global warming and prevent catastrophic climate change that may be on our horizon now. We must not let the [Bush] Administration distort science and rewrite and manipulate scientific reports in other areas. We must not let it turn the Environmental Protection Agency into the Environmental Pollution Agency.

  Edward Kennedy

  Science, Wings, Agency

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