Actions - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

There are times in life when the most comfortable thing is to do nothing at all. Things happen to you and you just let them happen.

- James Hilton, Lost Horizon (1933)

Always act on instinct, Burke. It puts the sparkle in existence.

- Gordon R. Dickson, ''The MonkeyWrench'' (1951)

Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.

- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)

''He knows his leaders are not corrupted by intellectual paralysis.'' ''What's that mean?'' Syd asked dryly. ''It means they act first and think second.''

- Philip K. Dick, TheWorld Jones Made (1956)

Once human beings realize something can be done, they're not satisfied until they've done it.

- Frank Herbert, ''Cease Fire'' (1958)

What I do I do because I like to do.

- Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (1962)

Confucius once said that a bear could not fart at the North Pole without causing a big wind in Chicago. By this he meant that all events, therefore, all men, are interconnected in an unbreakable web.What one man does, no matter how seemingly insignificant, vibrates through the strands and affects every man.

- Philip Jose Farmer, ''Riders of the PurpleWage'' (1967)

Every intelligent creature was curious - and curiosity prompted it to act when something incomprehensible took place.

- Stanislaw Lem, ''The Hunt'' (1968), translated by Michael Kandel (1977)

Orr had a tendency to assume that people knew what they were doing, perhaps because he generally assumed that he did not.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

If the human race ever stops acting on the basis of what it thinks it knows, paralyzed by the fear that its knowledge may be wrong, then Homo sapiens will be making its application for membership in the dinosaur club.

- Hank Davis, ''To Plant a Seed'' (1972)

Each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore (1972)

Do nothing because it is righteous or praiseworthy or noble to do so; do nothing because it seems good to do so; do only that which you must do and which you cannot do in any other way.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore (1972)

He had felt not that he was doing all the things he did, but that they were doing him. He had been in other people's hands. His own will had not acted.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974)

Do, or do not. There is no try.

- Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, The Empire Strikes Back (film, 1980)

All of us are either doers or voyeurs, isn't that right?

- Jack Dann, ''Going Under'' (1981)

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

- Richard Bach, The Bridge across Forever (1984)

Second thoughts can generally be amended with judicious action; injudicious actions can seldom be recovered with second thoughts.

- C. J. Cherryh, Cyteen (1988)

Honor is only a label they use for what they want you to do, Chernon. They want you to stay, so they call staying honorable.

- Sheri S. Tepper, The Gate toWomen's Country (1988)

Tenar sighed. There was nothing she could do, but there was always the next thing to be done.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea (1990)

She saw Culhane's conviction, shared by Lord Director Brill and even by such as Lady Mary, that what they did was right because they did it. She knew that look well.

- Nancy Kress, ''And Wild for to Hold'' (1991)

It was a world of acts, and words had no more influence on acts than the sound of a waterfall has on the flow of the stream.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

''Jesus,'' said ChevetteWashington, like somebody talking in their sleep, ''what are you doing?'' He didn't know, but hadn't he just gone and done it?

- William Gibson, Virtual Light (1993)

Of all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit. Gravity is easy-peasy by comparison.

- Terry Pratchett, Johnny and the Dead (1993)