Action Quotes - page 10
![It should also be born in mind that the research on 'movement' and the dynamic outlook on the world, which were the basis of Futurist theory, in no way required one to paint nothing but speeding cars or ballerinas in action; for a person who is seated, or an inanimate object, though apparently static, could be considered dynamically and suggest dynamic forms. I may mention as an example [his paintings] the 'Portrait of Madame S. (Gino Severini)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/60/gino-severini-action-basis-159860.webp)
The effect, if not the prime office, of criticism is to make our absorption and our enjoyment of the things that feed the mind as aware of itself as possible, since that awareness quickens the mental demand, which thus in turn wanders further and further for pasture. This action on the part of the mind practically amounts to a reaching out for the reasons of its interest, as only by its ascertaining them can the interest grow more various. This is the very education of our imaginative life.
Henry James
Our problem isn't that we're individualists. It's that our individualism is static rather than dynamic. We value what we think rather than what we do. We forget that we haven't done, or been, what we thought; that the first function of life is action, just as the first property of things is motion.
Fernando Pessoa
Most often, the reason something is "on your mind" is that you want it to be different than it currently is, and yet: you haven't clarified exactly what the intended outcomes is; you haven't decided what the very next physical action step is; and/or you haven't put reminders of the outcome and the action required in a system you trust. That's why it's on your mind.
David Allen (author)
There is but one question ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw, Is it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained and considered line; and the action of the hand in laying it is just as decisive, and just as "free" as the hand of a first-rate surgeon in a critical incision.
John Ruskin
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Raymond Chandler
There is no gene "for” such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. [...] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts.
Stephen Jay Gould
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
Definition of design = Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state.
Herbert Simon
