A Quote by Thomas Carlyle

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Thomas Carlyle

Quote Topics

Action End Man Noblest Though Thought

Quote Author

Thomas Carlyle
Scottish - Philosopher
December 4, 1795 - February 5, 1881

The end of Man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest?

Thomas Carlyle

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

The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos ). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.

Jacques Derrida

It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork.

Mark Twain

Among the noblest in the land - Though man may count himself the least - That man I honor and revere, Who without favor, without fear, In the great city dares to stand, The friend of every friendless beast.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says that the environment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?

Marshall McLuhan

Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy

Samuel Johnson

Thought is more than a right - it is the very breath of man. Whoever fetters thought attacks man himself. To speak, to write, to publish, are things, so far as the right is concerned, absolutely identical. They are the ever-enlarging circles of intelligence in action; they are the sonorous waves of thought.

Victor Hugo

When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.

James Baldwin

To do an evil action is base; to do a good action without incurring danger is common enough; but it is the part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks every thing.

Plutarch

Relationship is action, is it not? Action has meaning only in relationship; without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action. The ideology, the pattern for action, prevents action. Action based on ideology hinders the understanding of relationship between man and man.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The end of being is to know; and if you say, the end of knowledge is action,-why, yes, but the end of that action again, is knowledge.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.

John Stuart Mill

The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.