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Getting Going Quotes and Quotations


Act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done by hesitation.
How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start slowly changing the world!
To know what has to be done, then do it, comprises the whole philosophy of practical life.
If you want to do something, do it!
Something must happen!
Putting off an easy thing makes it hard. Putting off a hard thing makes it impossible.
Delay always breeds danger, and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it.
Getting an idea should be like sitting down on a pin; it should make you jump up and do something.
Procrastination is opportunity's assassin.
To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards; they will be dissipated, lost and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.
Why always, "not yet"? Do flowers in spring say, "not yet"?
We are very near to greatness: one step and we are safe; can we not take the leap?
The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.
The hour is ripe, and yonder lies the way.
Delay not to seize the hour!
I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
This one makes a net, this one stands and wishes. Would you like to make a bet which one gets the fishes?
Inspirations never go in for long engagements; they demand immediate marriage to action.
If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
The rewards in business go to the man who does something with an idea.
The important thing is somehow to begin.
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
As long as you can start, you are all right. The juice will come.
The way to get ahead is to start now.
Begin doing what you want to do now.
It is no good hearing an inner voice or getting an inner prompting if you do not immediately act on that inner prompting.
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
The first step is the hardest.
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.
Every beginning is hard.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something.
If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat.
If you don't place your foot on the rope, you'll never cross the chasm.
He who is outside the door has already a good part of his journey behind him.
The beginning is half of every action.
The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
The most important thing about getting somewhere is starting right where we are.
Sometimes we look so intently toward the pinnacle that we stumble over the steps leading to it. Development begins just where you are.
Few begin with anything like a clear view of what they want to do, and the fortune they seek may come in a very different form from that which they have kept in view.
The most effective way to do it, is to do it.
Beginnings are apt to be shadowy.
We will not know unless we begin.
Let us watch well our beginnings, and results will manage themselves.
You cannot contribute anything to the ideal condition of mind and heart known as Brotherhood, however much you preach, posture, or agree, unless you live it.
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
To always be intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.
To choose is also to begin.
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
Wisdom is harder to do than it is to know.
Justice is a concept. Muscle is the reality.
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do.
Do noble things, do not dream them all day long.
That is the principal thing: not to remain with the dream, with the intention, with the being in the mood, but always forcibly to convert it into all things.
Don't wait for your "ship to come in," and feel angry and cheated when it doesn't. Get going with something small.
Don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come; you have to get up and make them.
The individual activity of one man with backbone will do more than a thousand men with a mere wishbone.
With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
All the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will have it if they cannot find it.
Now, go take on the day!
You can't steal second base and keep one foot on first.
You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge one for yourself.
What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.
Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
I myself must mix with action, lest I wither by despair.
Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself.
The great end of life is not knowledge, but action.
The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.
This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.
Honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.
Share the passion and action of your time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.
Action is eloquence.
The shortest answer is doing.
The end of man is action.
Optimism, unaccompanied by personal effort, is merely a state of mind, and not fruitful.
To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world, we must do something.
The only menace is inertia.
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
If a man wants his dreams to come true, he must wake them up.
Men expect too much, do too little.
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up.
Act-act in the living present!
Life is essentially a series of events to be lived through rather than intellectual riddles to be played with and solved.
There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
What you don't do can be a destructive force.
He that is overcautious will accomplish little.
Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.
Often greater risk is involved in postponement than in making a wrong decision.
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
And all that you are sorry for is what you haven't done.
Can anything be sadder than work unfinished? Yes; work never begun.
The only things you regret are the things you didn't do.
Above all, try something.
To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.
Indifference and inaction must always pay a penalty.
Shun idleness. It is a rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.
I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act, but I do believe in a fate that falls on men unless they act.
The real nature of an ethic is that it does not become an ethic unless and until it goes into action.
For it isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it.
Words are mere bubbles of water, but deeds are drops of gold.
Ef women want any rights more'n dey got, why don't dey jes' take 'em and not be talkin' about it.
All talk of women's rights is moonshine. Women have every right. They have only to exercise them.
A man of words and not of deeds is like a garden full of weeds.
Life is worth being lived, but not worth being discussed all the time.
Action, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.
If you have something to do that is worthwhile doing, don't talk about it ... do it.
If deeds are wanting, all words appear mere vanity and emptiness.
Talking is easy, action difficult.
One's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into action ... which bring results.
Boast not of what thou would'st have done, but do.
I like to deliver more than I promise instead of the other way around.
When I talked, no one listened to me. But as soon as I acted I became persuasive, and I no longer find anyone incredulous.
If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
Words gain credibility by deed.
Men are alike in their promises. It is only in their deeds that they differ.
An acre of performance is worth a whole world of promise.
Well done is better than well said.
Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
We have too many sounding words and too few actions that correspond with them.
Activity in back of a very small idea will produce more than inactivity and the planning of a genius.
When it comes to getting things done, we need fewer architects and more bricklayers.
Get good counsel before you begin; and when you have decided, act promptly.
Ideas are one thing, and what happens is another.
Thinking about swimming isn't much like actually getting in the water. Actually getting in the water can take your breath away.
All worthwhile men have good thoughts, good ideas and good intentions, but precious few of them ever translate those into action.
A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all.
Unless a capacity for thinking be accompanied by a capacity for action, a superior mind exists in torture.
Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live.
What you theoretically know, vividly realize.
We must not waste life in devising means. It is better to plan less and do more.
The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.
We are always getting ready to live, but never living.
Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve.
It is a common observation that those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become oblivious to the requirements of their actual situation.
He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.
We don't have enough time to premeditate all our actions.
The opportunity is often lost by deliberating.
To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
Do not wait for ideal circumstances, nor the best opportunities; they will never come.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Anything worth doing is worth doing too soon.
"Now" is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream.
Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game.
I don't wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.
My evil genius Procrastination has whispered me to tarry 'til a more convenient season.
I realize that if I wait until I am no longer afraid to act, write, speak, be, I'll be sending messages on a ouija board, cryptic complaints from the other side.
He who postpones the hour of living is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out before he crosses.
Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen.
He who hesitates is last.
Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.
You decide you'll wait for your pitch. Then as the ball starts toward the plate, you think about your stance. And then you think about your swing. And then you realize that the ball that went past you for a strike was your pitch.
So what do we do? Anything. Something. So long as we just don't sit there. If we screw it up, start over. Try something else. If we wait until we've satisfied all the uncertainties, it may be too late.
Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
No age or time of life, no position or circumstance, has a monopoly on success. Any age is the right age to start doing!
Everyone must row with the oars he has.
The question for each man is not what he would do if he had the means, time, influence and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has.
How many opportunities come along? If you wait for the right one, that's wrong, because it may never be right, and what have you got to lose? Even if it's a disaster, you've tried, you've learned something, you've had an adventure. And that doesn't mean you can't do it again.
And now, Lord, what wait I for?
We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.
If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.
The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have.
One of these days is none of these days.
Who waits until the wind shall silent keep Will never find the ready hour to sow.
Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.
If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved.
There is nothing to be gained by waiting for a better situation. You see where you are and you do what you can with that.
It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you.
The things people discard tell more about them than the things they keep.
The test of any man lies in action.
Every action we take, everything we do, is either a victory or defeat in the struggle to become what we want to be.
It's where we go, and what we do when we get there, that tells us who we are.
By his deeds we know a man.
A human being has no discernible character until he acts.
What we make is more important than what we are, particularly if making is our profession.
To do is to be.
You can't build a reputation on what you intend to do.
To be is to do.
The way to do is to be.
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.
The emotions are not always subject to reason ... but they are always subject to action. When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence.
When I am idle and shiftless, my affairs become confused; when I work, I get results ... not great results, but enough to encourage me.
To be busy with material affairs is the best preservative against reflection, fears, doubts ... all these things which stand in the way of achievement. I suppose a fellow proposing to cut his throat would experience a sort of relief while occupied in stropping his razor carefully.
Acting can work a peculiar magic on the actor ... it can cure you (at least for the length of a performance) of a whole variety of ailments. Migraine headaches, miserable colds or toothaches will suddenly disappear as you're up there going through your paces.
It is only when I dally with what I am about, look back and aside instead of keeping my eyes straight forward, that I feel these cold sinkings of the heart. But the first broadside puts all to rights.
Action is the antidote to despair.
Action is the only reality; not only reality, but morality as well.
Performance releases pressure.
Wishing does not make a poor man rich.
You can't get rich sitting on the bench.
Action makes more fortunes than caution.
For purposes of action, nothing is more useful than narrowness of thought combined with energy of will.
How, then, find the courage for action?... By accepting the human condition more simply and candidly, by dreading troubles less, calculating less, hoping more.
Necessity of action takes away the fear of the act.
Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer.
One starts an action simply because one must do something.
We couldn't possibly know where it would lead, but we knew it had to be done.


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