50+ Best Taking Action Quotes: Get Inspired!

It’s time to stop over-thinking, stop talking, and start taking action to get what you want. This list of more than 50 inspirational quotes about taking action is sure to motivate and inspire you on your journey. 

Being more proactive in life will have a positive impact on your relationships, your confidence, your happiness and your success.  Action, or as Tony Robbins would say “massive determined action,” is the key.

Dream big, start small, but most of all, start.
Simon Sinek
Designer

What is the saying about action?

The are a lot of terrific inspirational quotes about action, but the gist of all these famous sayings is this: without taking action, nothing happens.  Action is the key to achieving everything you want in your life. Even simple daily changes towards action instead of inaction can create powerful results.

You'll never plow a field by turning it over in your mind.
Irish Proverb
Designer

The link between action, self-confidence, happiness, and success

Taking action elevates self-confidence.  Positive action fuels happiness.  And, focused, strategic action is what will help you  achieve the success you dream about. 

Action and self-confidence

Some people wish they could be confident, because if they were, they could go after what they want in life.  Wise people understand that confidence grows from being willing to take action even when you feel fear and uncertainty.

Several research studies confirm the link between action and risk-taking and self-confidence. Action  builds confidence.  In fact, consistent action is the path to self-confidence.

Will there be stumbling and failures along your way?  In most cases, yes.  Very few of us walk through life without tripping.  Yet, every time you fall, you have the opportunity to learn from those failures.  You may learn more from trying and not succeeding than you would from things always going right on the first try. 

Action and happiness

A bias for action is also correlated with personal happiness. 

In her book, The How of Happiness, positive psychology expert Sonja Lyubomirsky shared how happy people act differently than unhappy people.  You guessed it, taking specific actions such as doing more truly engaging activities, practicing acts of kindness, and taking care of  their bodies were among several actions happy people take on a regular basis.  

Action and success

In Stephen Covey’s mega-hit, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the first habit is “be proactive.”  The second habit is “begin with the end in mind.”  When you you decide to be a person of action, who is crystal clear on what you intend to accomplish, you can realize levels of success that others without these traits will never achieve.

An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.
Arnold Glasow
Designer
A dream becomes a goal when action is taken toward its achievement.
Bo Bennett
Designer
Actions speak louder than words: let your words teach and your actions speak.
Anthony of Padua
Designer
Only through action have I unlocked the power inside of me to become the person that I’ve always wanted to be.
Mel Robbins
Designer

Why is it important to take action?

Nothing gets done without action. Overcoming procrastination,  setting smart goals, and taking smart risks are all keys to becoming a person of action.

Mel Robbins offers the best tool I’ve found for becoming more action-focused 

In her book, The 5 Second Rule, motivational speaker and bestselling author Mel Robbins describes how a five-second count-down to action can change your life.  Her  book has old more than two million copies and has more than 100,000 five-star reviews;  I think Mel’s on to something!

If you struggle with motivation, I highly recommend that you grab a copy of Mel’s book (I personally love the audiobook version of The 5 Second Rule  so I can listen to it often and anywhere!).

Taking action impacts the quality of your entire life

The quality of your live will depend on the risks you’re willing to take and your propensity to take positive action. It’s amazing how much closer your goals will feel once you start moving in the direction of what you want. 

It doesn’t matter how big the steps you take are, as long as you’re taking a new step forward day in and day out. 

The most inspirational quotes on taking action

Your positive action combined with positive thinking results in success.
Shiv Khera
Designer
Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson
Designer
Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear.
Norman Vincent Peale
Designer
No more self-pity. No more comparing yourself to others. Time to step up. Take action right now and start living your life with purpose.
Anthon St. Maarten
Designer
I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.
DIane Ackerman
Designer
20 years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sales. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain
Designer
If you genuinely want something, don’t wait for it – teach yourself to be impatient.
Gurbaksh Chahal
Designer
The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
Lao Tzu
Designer
The only thing worse than starting something and failing … is not starting something.
Seth Godin
Designer
If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success
James Cameron
Designer
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

C.S. Lewis

Designer
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration
Thomas Edison
Designer
Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble yet reasonable confidence in your own powers, you cannot be successful or happy.
Norman Vincent Peale
Designer
I can’t imagine a person becoming a success who doesn’t give this game of life everything he’s got.
Walter Cronkite
Designer
It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there will be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.
Mahatma Gandhi
Designer
When you’ve got a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let it go.
Carol Burnett
Designer
Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.
Chris Grosser
Designer
I don’t focus on what I’m up against. I focus on my goals and ignore the rest.
Venus Williams
Designer
Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.
George Herbert
Designer
Not fulfilling your dreams will be a loss to the world, because the world needs everyone’s gift – yours and mine.
Barbara Sher
Designer
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier
Designer
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Leonardo da Vinci
Designer
Go for it now. The future is promised to no one.
Wayne Dyer
Designer
This one step: choosing a goal and sticking to it, changes everything.
Scott Reed
Designer
All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
Designer
Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream.
Peter McWilliams
Designer
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
Harriet Beecher Stow
Designer
The path to success is to take massive, determined actions.”
Tony Robbins
Designer
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Arthur Ashe
Designer
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carneie
Designer
When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.
Confucius
Designer
It was the character that got us out of bed, the commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.
Zig Ziglar
Designer
Create your own tomorrows with your thoughts and actions – today.
Catherine DeVrye
Designer
What we plant in the soil of contemplation, we shall reap in the harvest of action.
Meister Eckhart
Designer
There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction
John F. Kennedy
Designer
I never worry about action, but only inaction
Winston Churchill
Designer
Action may not always bring happiness … but there is no happiness without action
Benjamin Disraeli
Designer
There is only one proof of ability -- action.
Marie Ebner-Eschenbach
Designer
You must do the thing you think you can not do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Designer
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Designer
God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails.”
St. Augstine
Designer
Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.
Thomas Huxley
Designer
The real measure of intelligence is action. Don’t wait because the time will never really be right. If you don’t start, you have already failed before you begin.
Itayi Garande
Designer
We do not need, and indeed never will have, all the answers before we act. It is often through taking action that we can discover some of them.
Charlotte Bunch
Designer
You are not what you think; you are not what you say; you are what you do.
Peter Dunne
Designer
Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.
Denis Waitley
Designer
A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.
Michael G. Cioppa
Designer
The secret of getting ahead is getting started.
Mark Twain
Designer

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