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"The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action." »Eric Hoffer
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"As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself mostly by the passion of his prejudices and the consistent narrowness of his outlook." »Joseph Conrad
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"His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it." »Lois McMaster Bujold
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"His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it." »Lois McMaster Bujold, "Memory", 1996
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"It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled." »F. F. Bosworth
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"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end." »Lord Acton
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"The political lesson of Watergate is this Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election." »Gerald R. Ford
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"To will is to select a goal, determine a course of action that will bring one to that goal, and then hold to that action till the goal is reached. The key is action." »Michael Hanson
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"political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." »George Orwell, 1946
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"The world is proof that God is a committee." »Bob Stokes
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"To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three men, two of whom are absent." »Robert Copeland
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"Vision without action is merely a dream. action without vision just passes the time. Vision with action can change the world." »Joel Barker
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"If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock." »Arthur Goldberg
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"A camel is a horse designed by committee." »Sir Alec Issigonis
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"There is no monument dedicated to the memory of a committee." »Lester J. Pourciau
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"A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled." »Sir Barnett Cocks
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"A committee can make a decision that is dumber than any of its members." »David Coblitz
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"If you see a snake, just kill it. Don't appoint a committee on snakes." »H. Ross Perot
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"A university is not a service station. Neither is it a political society, nor a meeting place for political societies. With all its limitations and failures, and they are invariably many, it is the best and most benign side of our society insofar as that society aims to cherish the human mind." »Richard Hofstadter
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"What is a committee A group of the unwilling, picked from the unfit, to do the unnecessary." »Richard Harkness
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"A committee is a thing which takes a week to do what one good man can do in an hour." »Elbert Hubbard
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"Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring fact of mystery." »Henry Miller
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"Before every action ask yourself. Will this bring more monkeys on my back. Will the result of my action be a blessing or a heavy burden?" »Alfred A. Montapert
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"Ideas are powerful things, requiring not a studious contemplation but an action, even if it is only an inner action." »Midge Dector
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"A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action." »Jawaharlal Nehru
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"...in the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it." »George Will, Newsweek, 2/22/93
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"The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain non-action. One must not wish to leap over everything and penetrate directly." »Lu Yen
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"We are born to action and whatever is capable of suggesting and guiding action has power over us from the first." »Charles Horton Cooley
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"The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogether bestial and savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good. But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a devil in history, it is this power principle." »Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin
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"An action will not be right unless the will be right for from thence is the action derived. Again, the will will not be right unless the disposition of the mind be right for from thence comes the will." »Lucius Annaeus Seneca
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