Action Not Reaction Quotes & Sayings

He held his ground like a sweet gum stump trying hard to live in a spirit of love and action, not anger and reaction — Timothy B. Tyson

Remorse (I did it) is an easy, passive, human reaction, there is no value in it and it changes nothing. Repentance (I will not do it again) is the difficult call to action in a redeemed heart. It has an eternal impact and it can change everything. — William Branks

A wrong action may not bring its reaction at once, even as fresh milk turns not sour at once: like a smouldering fire concealed under ashes it consumes the wrongdoer, the fool. — Gautama Buddha

We have to accept that any action we take might promote an equal and opposite reaction that we do not want. We have to realize that even the most noble actions or most obviously correct course can have its dark side that we cannot control or reason our way out of. The fighter of the "just war" must understand that her actions will result in the deaths of other humans; many of whom may be innocent. The pacifist who refuses all war must realize that his inaction might likewise result in the deaths of the innocent. There are no actions without contradiction
and yet we must act, for not to act is also a contradictory action with both positive and negative effects. — John Hunter

People who pay the price for security may never really feel secure rather the more their insecurity grows inside them because they are paying the price for action but not their internal reaction — Robert Kiyosaki

Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write. — Elizabeth Bowen

Reaction is just that - an action you have taken before. When you "re-act," what you do is assess the incoming data, search your memory bank for the same or nearly the same experience, and act the way you did before. This is all the work of the mind, not of your soul. — Neale Donald Walsch

A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction. — Rita Mae Brown

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction; it is, in great part, a protest against Paganism. Its ideal is negative rather than positive; passive rather than action; innocence rather than Nobleness; Abstinence from Evil, rather than energetic Pursuit of Good: in its precepts (as has been well said) 'thou shalt not' predominates unduly over 'thou shalt. — John Stuart Mill

The secular world is the world of history as made by human beings. Human agency is subject to investigation and analysis, which it is the mission of understanding to apprehend, criticize, influence, and judge. Above all, critical thought does not submit to state power or to commands to join in the ranks marching against one or another approved enemy. Rather than the manufactured clash of civilizations, we need to concentrate on the slow working together of cultures that overlap, borrow from each other, and live together in far more interesting ways than any abridged or inauthentic mode of understanding can allow. But for that kind of wider perception we need time and patient and skeptical inquiry, supported by faith in communities of interpretation that are difficult to sustain in a world demanding instant action and reaction. — Edward W. Said

We all collide. It made him think of Newton's third law of motion:
for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. It was like, when
you collided with someone, they would not be in the same position as they
used to be. Everyone equally affected one another. — J.R. Lenk

If you dare to create something and put it out there, after all, then it may accidentally stir up a response. That's the natural order of life: the eternal inhale and exhale of action and reaction. But you are definitely not in charge of the reaction - even when that reaction is flat-out bizarre. — Elizabeth Gilbert

A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself. — Cesare Pavese

When chemists artificially produce an amino acid or a sugar they almost always synthesize only a single product at a time, which they manage by carefully controlling the experimental conditions for the selected reaction, such as temperature and the concentrations of the various ingredients, to optimize the synthesis of their target compound. This is not an easy task and requires careful control of many different conditions inside customized flasks, condensers, separation columns, filtration devices and other elaborate chemical apparatus. Yet every living cell in your body is continually synthesizing thousands of distinct biochemicals within a reaction chamber filled with just a few millionths of a microliter of fluid.*7 How do all those diverse reactions proceed concurrently? And how is all this molecular action orchestrated within a microscopic cell? These questions are the focus of the new science of systems biology; but it is fair to say that the answers remain mysterious! — Johnjoe McFadden

Action triggers reaction.
An object somehow responds when we observe it.
We just assume that we do objective.
In fact, unconsciously we only want to see some parts
of the object which do not evoke the bitter memories of our past. — Toba Beta

Happiness comes from action, not from reaction. It is a feeling, not the success, but the perception. — Debasish Mridha

I don't think you can pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere indefinitely and not have a reaction. But there are great scientists such as Freeman Dyson, one of the greatest physicists of the last hundred years, who has studied the question, who believes quite the opposite. The reason transnational action is so difficult is because the major problem with climate change is, A, that there is no consensus, and, B, that the economic cost is simply staggering. Reversing it completely might mean undoing the modern industrial economy. — Charles Krauthammer

Whenever asana is done mechanically from the front brain, the action is felt only on the peripheral body, and there is no inner sensation, there is no luminous inner light. If the asana is done with continual reference to the back of the brain, there is a reaction to each action, and there is sensitivity. Then life is not only dynamic, but it is also electrified with life force. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Such is the law of karma. Every action, howsoever innocent, has a reaction, that one has to experience if not in this life, then in the next,' said — Devdutt Pattanaik

Watch, become alert, observe, and go on dropping all the reactive patterns in you. Each moment try to respond to the reality - not according to the ready-made idea in you but according to the reality as it is there outside. Respond to the reality! Respond with your total consciousness but not with your mind. And then when you respond spontaneously and you don't react, action is born. Action is beautiful, reaction is ugly. Only a man of awareness acts, the man of unawareness reacts. Action liberates. Reaction goes on creating the same chains, goes on making them thicker and harder and stronger. Live a life of response and not of reaction. — Osho

On the question of the machinery of government, we have seen that a good deal of our trouble seems to have stemmed from the extent to which the executive has felt itself beholden to the short-term trends of public opinion in the country and from what we might call the erratic and subjective nature of public reaction to foreign-policy questions. I would like to emphasize that I do not consider public reaction to foreign-policy questions to be erratic and undependable over the long term; but I think the record indicates that in the short term our public opinion, or what passes for public opinion in the thinking of official Washington, can be easily led astray into areas of emotionalism and subjectivity which make a poor and inadequate guide for national action. — George F. Kennan

Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing. In short, radicals must have a degree of control over the flow of events. — Saul Alinsky

To create one must be able to respond. Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of though, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression or message that carries moment, passion and meaning. In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or cendoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

You may not have the power to control whatever happens to you, but you have the power to stop it from affecting your sense of style. — Israelmore Ayivor

Theology does not thrive in the world of action and reaction, change: it grows on calm, like the scum on a stagnant pool. And it flourishes, it prospers, on decline. Only in a world where everything is patently being lost can a priest stir men's hearts as a poet would by maintaining that nothing is in vain. — John Gardner

Why don't you take a turn now," she suggested. "I want to see an expert in action." A flush climbed his cheeks, but he took the Colt from her, reloaded, and stepped over to the steer. With an effortless lift of his arm, he rapidly shot five rounds dead center into the heart area. He lowered the gun, turned, and, lifting an eyebrow, waited for her reaction. Impressed by his quiet confidence, Elizabeth mirrored his raised eyebrow. "You make it look so easy." Nick laughed. "Been shootin' since I was Mark's age." She teased back. "That's not so long ago." "A man grows up fast in these parts. When you need to survive," he spun the words into a drawl, "you learn to hit what ya aim for. — Debra Holland

Truth and falsity, indeed understanding, is not necessarily something purely intellectual, remote from feelings and attitudes ... It is in the total conduct of men rather than in their statements that truth or falsehood lives, more in what a man does, in his real reaction to other men and to things, in his will to do them justice, to live at one with them. Here lies the inner connection between truth and justice. In the realm of behavior and action, the problem recurs as to the difference between piece and part. — Max Wertheimer

Confidence comes from thoughtful action, reflection, and experience. Confidence does not come from reaction. — Debasish Mridha

I will waste not even a precious second today in anger or hate or jealousy or selfishness. I know that the seeds I sow I will harvest, because every action, good or bad, is always followed by an equal reaction. I will plant only good seeds this day. — Og Mandino

Between an action and reaction, between a gesture and its consequences, everybody agrees that there is an exact relationship, but not necessarily a proportionate one. — Filippo Bologna

I was thinking that if it really was my fault, if every reaction could be traced to an action before, then at the very beginning would be me at the canteen queue with my twenty-dollar note instead of my packed lunch. In turn I could blame my mother for not caring enough and maybe I could blame my father for making my mum stop caring. Maybe all this was supposed to happen. It had been happening all along. It was too hard to try and stop it now. In a twisted way, there was cold comfort in that. — Shirley Marr

I do not like this idea that we have begun to kill off - at great velocity and accelerating speed - all of the things that sustain us. I didn't like it at all when I first thought of it, but most people around me do not seem that disturbed by it, even though the knowledge of this is obvious and readily available to anyone who looks up trees on the Internet. At least, no one seems bothered, because no one has taken action to amend it. So they must not care. That is the only explanation I can think of for the lack of reaction to this fact. — Ned Hayes

The mind moves by instincts, associations and premonitions and not by fixed dates or completed processes. Action and reaction will occur simultaneously: or the cause actually be found after the effect. Errors will be resisted before they have been properly promulgated: notions will be first defined long after they are dead. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Here, there's no anger, no loss, not even fear. When he's battling, everything has a crystal clarity, just action and reaction. — Anonymous

Military deployments have never been something to enjoy, but the consequence of the actions, the shared nature of the sacrifices, and the nobility of the cause are invigorating. To be clear, I'm not talking about the killing and the death; rather, the sense of purpose that pervades every action, reaction, and outcome. — Pete Hegseth

Good writers may "tell" about almost anything in fiction except the characters' feelings. One may tell the reader that the character went to a private school (one need not show a scene at the private school if the scene has no importance for the rest of the narrative), or one may tell the reader that the character hates spaghetti; but with rare exceptions the characters' feelings must be demonstrated: fear, love, excitement, doubt, embarrassment, despair become real only when they take the form of events - action (or gesture), dialogue, or physical reaction to setting. Detail is the lifeblood of fiction. — John Gardner

Change does not surface when you are not ready to be the catalyst. Your reaction matters, not your inaction. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The brain is nourished by reaction and experience; it lives on experience. But experience is always limiting and conditioning; memory is the machinery of action. Without experience, knowledge and memory, action is not possible but such action is fragmentary, limited. Reason, organized thought, is always incomplete; idea, response of thought, is barren and belief is the refuge of thought. All experience only strengthens thought negatively or positively. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Thought determines action. Do not let your whole life be a reaction to the things that happen around you each day. Let your life be an action. — Matthew Kelly

Because everything is interdependent, there are no simple, single causes and effects. Every action creates not just an equal and opposite reaction, but a web of reverberating consequences. — Starhawk

In the parallel universe the laws of physics are suspended.
What goes up does not necessarily come down, a body at rest does not tend to stay at
rest and not every action can be counted on to provoke an equal and opposite reaction.
Time, 'too, is different. It may run in circles, flow backward, skip about from now to
then. The very arrangement of molecules is fluid: Tables can be clocks, faces,
flowers. — Susanna Kaysen

IF YOUR OVERALL SITUATION IS UNSATISFACTORY or unpleasant, separate out this instant and surrender to what is. That's the flashlight cutting through the fog. Your state of consciousness then ceases to be controlled by external conditions. You are no longer coming from reaction and resistance. Then look at the specifics of the situation. Ask yourself, "Is there anything I can do to change the situation, improve it, or remove myself from it?" If so, take appropriate action. Focus not on the hundred things that you will or may have to do at some future time but on the one thing that you can do now. This doesn't mean you should not do any planning. It may well be that planning is the one thing you can do now. But make sure you don't keep running "mental movies" that continually project yourself into the future, and so lose the Now. Any action you take may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does - do not resist what is. — Eckhart Tolle

A sensible person does not read a novel as a task. He reads it as a diversion. He is prepared to interest himself in the characters and is concerned to see how they act in given circumstances, and what happens to them; he sympathizes with their troubles and is gladdened by their joys; he puts himself in their place and, to an extent, lives their lives. Their view of life, their attitude to the great subjects of human speculation, whether stated in words or shown in action, call forth in him a reaction of surprise, of pleasure or of indignation. But he knows instinctively where his interest lies and he follows it as surely as a hound follows the scent of a fox. Sometimes, through the author's failure, he loses the scent. Then he flounders about till he finds it again. He skips. — W. Somerset Maugham