#Inaction Quotes

“I have been long a sleeper; but I trustMy absence doth neglect no great designWhich by my presence might have been concluded.”

“Milk-livered man,That bear'st a cheek for blows, a head for wrongs;Who hast not in thy brows an eye discerningThine honor from thy suffering; [that not know'stFools do those villains pity who are punishedEre they have done their mischief. Where's thy drum?France spreads his banners in our noiseless land,With plumed helm thy state begins to threat,Whilst thou, a moral fool, sits still and cries'Alack, why does he so?']”

“It is the cowish terror of his spirit that dares not undertake; he'll not feel wrongs which tie him to an answer.”

“I have a soul of lead So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.”

“Words to deeds cold breath gives.”

“When our actions do not, our fears make us traitors.”

“Omission to do what is necessary Seals a commission to a blank of danger; And danger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when we sit idly in the sun.”

“The greatest of all mistakes is to do nothing because you think you can only do a little.”

“How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy & inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted - so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze.”

“Statistics have proven that the surest way to get anything out of the public mind and never hear of it again is to have a Senate committee appointed to look into it.”

“The Senate just sits and waits till they find out what the president wants, so they know how to vote against him.”

“Obviously, there is little you can learn from doing nothing.”

“We do more talking progress than we do progressing.”

“The United States investigates everything - usually after it's dead.”

“I never worry about action, but only inaction.”

“A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.”

“Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.”

“It is not open to the cool bystander . . . to set himself up as an impartial judge of events which would never have occurred had he outstretched a helping hand in time.”

“A tardiness in nature,Which often leaves the history unspoke,That it intends to do.”

“The road to someday leads to a town of nowhere.”

“There are many people who live in what I call 'No-man's Land,' a place where you're not really happy, but you're not unhappy enough to do anything about it. That's a dangerous place. It's a place where people numb themselves to their dreams. It's where they dismiss hope and accept what's in front of them instead of driving toward what they really want in life.”

“Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.”

“Not doing it is certainly the best way to not getting it”

“Inactivity strikes us as intelligent behavior.”

“Most people aren't really happy, but they aren't unhappy enough to do anything about it. That's a dangerous place to be.”

“Why should we be cowed by the name of Action?.”

“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.”

“To sit home, read one's favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing.”

“Councils of War never fight.”

“The worst thing I can do is nothing.”

“Society does not go down because of the activities of criminals,But because of the inactivities of the good people.”

“A great, great deal has been said about the weather, but very little has ever been done.”

“Do it or don't do it - you will regret both.”

“The individual (no matter how well-meaning he might be, no matter how much strength he might have, if only he would use it) does not have the passion to rip himself away from either the coils of Reflection or the seductive ambiguities of Reflection; nor do the surroundings and times have any events or passions, but rather provide a negative setting of a habit of reflection, which plays with some illusory project only to betray him in the end with a way out: it shows him that the most clever thing to do is nothing at all.”

“You never know where your actions will lead to. But if you don't do anything they will lead you nowhere.”

“The really important things are said over cocktails and are never done.”

“The honest ratepayer and his healthy family have no doubt often mocked at the dome-like forehead of the philosopher, and laughed over the strange perspective of the landscape that lies beneath him. If they really knew who he was, they would tremble. For Chuang Tsǔ spent his life in preaching the great creed of Inaction, and in pointing out the uselessness of all things.”

“You never realize what the aftereffect of your activities, however in the event that you don't do anything, obviously there will be no outcome.”

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”

“We loiter in winter while it is already spring.”

“It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch-antirevolutionaries.”

“One way to avoid criticism is to do nothing and to be a nobody. The world will then not bother you.”

“Without action, you aren't going anywhere.”

“The SILENCE of the good people is more DANGEROUS than the BRUTALITY of the bad people”

“Perhaps the worst sin in life is knowing right and not doing it.”

“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

“We regret the things we don't do more than the things we do.”

“A man sits as many risks as he runs.”

“You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.”