A Quote by George Santayana

Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress.

George Santayana

Quote Topics

Action Change Essentially Motion Practical Progress Sense Thought Would Would Be

Quote Author

George Santayana
Spanish - Novelist
December 16, 1863 - September 26, 1952

Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting; by complaints and denunciation; by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought, there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.

Henry George

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

External motion we call action; internal motion is human thought.

Swami Vivekananda

When I met Raj Kundra for the first time, I thought my whole life would change. I thought I'd get big breaks. I never thought Shilpa Shetty's husband would make me do wrong things.

Sherlyn Chopra

Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.

William Kingdon Clifford

Once you change your philosophy, you change your thought pattern. Once you change your thought pattern, you change your attitude. Once you change your attitude, it changes your behavior pattern and then you go on into some action. As long as you gotta sit-down philosophy, you’ll have a sit-down thought pattern, and as long as you think that old sit-down thought you’ll be in some kind of sit-down action.

Malcolm X

I never in my wildest dreams ever thought that I would be on TV, or that I would have a video game or an action figure, or be in magazines in England, Australia, Mexico and different parts of other countries? I never thought I could do that, that that would be me.

Melina Perez

I know that people change. I thought... I thought we're going to change together. I thought that's what it meant to be in love.

Rainbow Rowell

No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution - Revolution is but thought carried into action. Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.

Emma Goldman

I thought that it would be easier to learn that if I worked in motion pictures. So I went to work with one motion picture producer who was developing a color system. This didn't do to me much good. All I did was pick filters for the camera.

John Hench

I am in awe of the perpetual tumult of the sea. I am moved by the still place on the horizon where the sky begins. I am stirred by the soaring and dipping fields that make the landscape into a rumpled green counterpane. I thought I would never have such powerful feelings again. I thought I would live through the rest of my life having experiences, and thoughts, but I never thought I would again feel deeply-- I was convinced that my wounds had healed and become thick scars, essentially numb.

Katharine Weber

There are few who have at once thought and capacity for action. Thought expands, but lames; action animates, but narrows.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The Supreme Court said nothing about silliness, but I suspect it may play more of a role than one might suppose. People are, if anything, more touchy about being thought silly than they are about being thought unjust... Probably the first slave ship, with Negroes lying in chains on its decks, seemed commonsensical to the owners who operated it and to the planters who patronized it. But such a vessel would not be in the realm of common sense today. The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change.

E. B. White

The only thought in the world that is worth anything is free thought. To free thought we owe all past progress and all hope for the future. Since when has any one made it appear that shackled thought could get on better than that which is free? Brains are a great misfortune if one is never to use them.

Richard Savage

...you're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.