Action-Inaction

There is nothing more explosive than a skilled population condemned to inaction. Such a population is likely to become a hotbed of extremism and intolerance, and be receptive to any proselytizing ideology, however absurd and vicious, which promises vast action. (Eric Hoffer)

It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquillity. (Samuel Johnson)

What is this self inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us and urge us on to futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us? (T S Eliot)

The lazy are always wanting to do something. (Vauvenargues)

The majority prove their worth by keeping busy. A busy life is the nearest thing to a purposeful life. (Eric Hoffer)

The highest pleasure to be got out of freedom, and having nothing to do, is labour. (Mark Twain)

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

There is no conceivable human action which custom has not at one time justified and at another condemned. (Joseph Wood Krutch)

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia. (Elbert Hubbard)

Generally among intelligent people are found nothing but paralytics and among men of action nothing but fools. (André Gide)

Action is thought tempered by illusion. (Elbert Hubbard)

The great end of life is not knowledge but action. (Thomas Henry Huxley)

Action (is) the great business of mankind, and the whole matter about which all laws are conversant. (John Locke)