Human Actions Quotes - Page 2

• Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

  Clarence Darrow

  Action, Emotion, Instinct

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “Crime: Its Cause and Treatment”, p.37, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Either the distances betweem the distant quarters of the globe are diminished, or you have extended the powers of human action.

  Hugh Elliot

  Distance, Action, Quarters

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• We can learn from history how past generations thought and acted, how they responded to the demands of their time and how they solved their problems. We can learn by analogy, not by example, for our circumstances will always be different than theirs were. The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone. They foreclose the possibility of making other choices and thus they determine future events.

  Gerda Lerner

  Knowledge, Past, Actions Have Consequences

  Gerda Lerner (1998). “Why History Matters: Life and Thought”, p.205, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• The world looks with some awe upon a man who appears unconcernedly indifferent to home, money, comfort, rank, or even power and fame. The world feels not without a certain apprehension, that here is someone outside its jurisdiction; someone before whom its allurements may be spread in vain; some one strangely enfranchised, untamed, untrammelled by convention, moving independent of the ordinary currents of human action.

  Winston Churchill

  Moving, Home, Independent

  Sir Winston S. Churchill (2013). “Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches”, p.114, A&C Black

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• I have discovered a universal rule which seems to apply more than any other in all human actions or words: namely, to steer away from affectation at all costs, as if it were a rough and dangerous reef, and (to use perhaps a novel word for it) to practise in all things a certain nonchalance [sprezzatura] which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.

  Baldassare Castiglione

  Cost, Use, Nonchalance

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• Hunger, love, vanity, and fear. There are four great motives of human action.

  William Graham Sumner

  Motivation, Vanity, Four

  William Graham Sumner (2007). “Folkways: A Study of Mores, Manners, Customs and Morals”, p.18, Cosimo, Inc.

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• There is in the universe something for the description and analysis of which the natural sciences cannot contribute anything. There are events beyond the range of those events that the procedures of the natural sciences are fit to observe and describe. There is human action.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Society, Events, Analysis

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Doe, Actors, Action

  Ludwig Von Mises (1962). “The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method”

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• Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along.

  Thomas Sowell

  Powerful, Political, Advice

  Thomas Sowell (2007). “A Conflict of Visions: Idealogical Origins of Political Struggles”, p.8, Basic Books

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• Every human action gains in honor, in grace, in all true magnificence, by its regard to things that are to come. It is the far sight, the quiet and confident patience, that, above all other attributes, separate man from man, and near him to his Maker; and there is no action nor art, whose majesty we may not measure by this test.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Future, Men

  John Ruskin (1849). “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”, p.171

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• The notion that a society could be regulated entirely by market forces is a utopian fantasy: an impossible dream generated by imagining what the world would be like if everyone's behavior was utterly consistent with some abstract moral ideal-in this case, economic theories that assume all human action is based on calculating, systematic, (but scrupulously law-abiding), greed.

  David Graeber

  Dream, Law, Greed

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• The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences, and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone.

  Gerda Lerner

  Actions Have Consequences, Choices, Undone

  Gerda Lerner (1998). “Why History Matters: Life and Thought”, p.205, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• A burning desire is the greatest motivator of every human action. The desire for success implants 'success consciousness' which, in turn, creates a vigorous and ever-increasing 'habit of success'.

  Paul J. Meyer

  Desire, Burning, Action

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• Always, in every human action, there are leaders.

  Vicente Fox

  Leader, Action, Humans

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• Economics is uncertain because its fundamental subject matter is not money but human action. That's why economics is not the dismal science, it's no science at all.

  Julian Baggini

  Fundamentals, Matter, Action

  "The science of ignorance" by Julian Baggini, www.theguardian.com. November 25, 2008.

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• One can relish the varied idiocy of human action during a panic to the full, for, while it is a time of great tragedy, nothing is being lost but money.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Depression, Tragedy, Panic

  JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH (1962). “THE GREAT CRASH 1929”

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• The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories, and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Life, Mean, Men

  Ludwig Von Mises (1947). “Planned Chaos”, p.49, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• I will be guided by the Christian ethic and an awareness that human action is by nature transient.

  Horst Kohler

  Christian, Ethics, Action

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• Decisive inventions and discoveries always are initiated by an intellectual or moral stimulus as their actual motivating force, but, usually, the final impetus to human action is given by material impulses ... merchants stood as a driving force behind the heroes of the age of discovery; this first heroic impulse to conquer the world emanated from very mortal forces

  Stefan Zweig

  Hero, Discovery, Conquer The World

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• Take, say, the solidarity movement in Central America, which I think is what you probably had in mind. To a large extent, it comes out of mainstream Christianity, based on beliefs that have had outrageous human consequences in the past, and that I think are totally indefensible. In this case, they happen to lead to some of the most courageous, heroic, and honourable human action that's taking place anywhere in the world. Well, that's how life is, I guess. It doesn't come in neat little packages.

  Noam Chomsky

  Past, Thinking, America

  Source: chomsky.info

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• Fear or stupidity has always been the basis of most human actions.

  Albert Einstein

  Memorable, Stupidity, Action

  Albert Einstein (2010). “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein”, p.187, Princeton University Press

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• Every human action, whether it has become positive or negative, must depend on motivation.

  Dalai Lama

  Motivation, Negative, Action

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• In the world of reality, life, and human action there is no such thing as interests independent of ideas, preceding them temporarily and logically. What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Independent, Reality, Men

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• Professional psychologists seem to think that they are the only people who make sense out of human actions. The rest of us know that everybody tries to do just this. What else is gossip?

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher

  Thinking, People, Gossip

  Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1971). “Four-square”, Ayer Company Pub

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• The Greeks bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language--the word 'enthusiasm'--en theos--a god within. The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.

  Louis Pasteur

  Beautiful, Spring, Inspiration

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