Radical Act Quotes

Thinking for yourself is still a radical act ~ Nancy Kline

Our identities matter. They help make us who we are and shape our outlook. Existing in them is a radical act, one that requires, in many instances, courage, hard work, and determination. I am a better person because of the experiences and insights that I've had because I'm transgender. I'm a more compassionate person than I was before I accepted that part of my identity. ~ Sarah McBride

Because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values run so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the soul may well turn out to be a radical act, a challenge to accepted norms. ~ Thomas More

It has been said, "History is written by the victors." I take this to mean we can make ourselves victorious by writing, and then rewriting our own stories. In a country and culture so dominated by media, by the manipulation of words and stories, telling the tales of people whose stories historically have not been told is a radical act and I believe an act that can change the world and help rewrite history. ~ Jennifer Beals

...we can choose to reflect the places we see the lack of love in the world, or we could try to be stronger than our weaknesses, and shine a light on something better. We were facing down our own personal Goliaths. I wanted to invite her to stand with me and try the radical act of simply staying put. To tell the truth and trust that whatever comes next is going to be okay. ~ Sara Bareilles

Just stopping, is a radical act of sanity and love. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

As a Jew, keeping kosher was tantamount to Peter's very faith and identity, but when following Jesus led him to the homes and tables of Gentiles, Peter had a vision in which God told him not to let rules - even biblical ones - keep him from loving his neighbor. So when Peter was invited to the home of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, he declared: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean" (Acts 10:28). Sometimes the most radical act of Christian obedience is to share a meal with someone new. ~ Rachel Held Evans

I think a major act of leadership right now, call it a radical act, is to create the places and processes so people can actually learn together, using our experiences. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

I still don't know how to live my life except on my haunches at the feet of Jesus, eyes fixed on his face. Nothing else "works." No formula, no method makes me feel so fully human and alive as the radical act of living loved. ~ Sarah Bessey

Because it is a radical act of freedom, creative achievement is a heroic process that requires, in all its permutations, specific strengths of character. ~ Robert Grudin

Trusting women means also trusting them to find their way. This isn't to say, of course, that I think women's sexual choices are intrinsically "empowered" or "feminist." I just believe that in a world that values women so little, and so specifically for their sexuality, we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. Because in this kind of hostile culture, trusting women
is a radical act. ~ Jessica Valenti

The reality of our connection is a new story for the whole of civilization, and operating from the wisdom of relatedness is a radical act. It is the stuff of peaceful revolution and lasting transformation. ~ Heather Lyn Mann

The most radical act anyone can commit is to be happy. ~ Patch Adams

Staying alive with a brain bent on self-annihilation, in a world that doesn't necessarily value your worth, is the ultimate radical act. ~ Faith G. Harper

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, to feel alone or want to be alone is deeply unfashionable: to admit to feeling alone is to reject and betray others, as if they are not good company, and do not have entertaining, interesting lives of their own to distract us, and to actually seek to be alone is a radical act; to want to be alone is to refuse a certain kind of conversational hospitality and to turn to another door, and another kind of welcome, not necessarily defined by human vocabulary. ~ David Whyte

Teaching English is an intrinsically radical act. Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other? ~ Mary Rose O'Reilley

Fiction, at its best, is a radical act of intimacy. It seeks to join, to merge, to know deeply; and, as with intimacy, there is a way in which it cannot be faked. ~ Stacey D'Erasmo

She has always thought that kindness was an active thing. But the not doing of something, an act of restraint -- could that be kindness too? ~ Jessie Burton

These ideas grew out of the Enlightenment; their roots are in Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, Humboldt's Limits of State Action, Kant's insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom, not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved. With the development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the emerging social order. In fact, on the very same assumptions that led classical liberalism to oppose the intervention of the state in social life, capitalist social relations are also intolerable. ~ Noam Chomsky

All political parties, organizations, and all people should abide by the constitution and laws without any exception. They must all act in accordance with the constitution and laws. I see that as a defining feature of modern political system development. ~ Wen Jiabao

When I first became famous, I didn't know if I could go where I wanted to because I didn't know how people were going to act. Some folks would scream and holler, and I didn't know what to do with that. ~ Jill Scott

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you - may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours. ~ Anne Carson

I always wanted to act, but never thought of it as something serious to do. ~ John Cullum

I would warn against too much of a radical devotion to rationality. Rationality is an illusion, an invented concept, a construct from the mind of man. It is not a property of the universe. Rationality may be a useful tool when it suits our purposes, however, it is merely a measuring stick, calibrated against what we know of the nature of the universe - all of which may or may not be completely inaccurate. ~ Derek R. Audette

Internet pharmacies return to consumers the choice promised by supporters of the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. That law established federal requirements for drug safety and labeling but exempted prescription medicines from the labeling rules. ~ Virginia Postrel

Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I'm writing about, who don't always act in the film afterward. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

The sacred books of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and the Veda are the best repositories of the ideas that mattered most to our ancestors, and to ignore them is an act of childish conceit. But it is equally naive to believe that whatever was written down in the past contains an absolute truth that lasts forever. ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

We all exhibit our faith commitments by the way we live, and those commitments are oriented around a value or set of values, a belief or set of beliefs, by which we guide our lives. We may posit reason as the highest good. Or pleasure. Or love and kindness. But no foundation is without an act of faith to sustain it. ~ Terryl L. Givens

One of the basic causes for all the trouble in the world today is that people talk too much and think too little. They act impulsively without thinking. ~ Margaret Chase Smith

When you're twenty-three and you fall in love, you tend to think that love will supersede any problems. But no matter how much you love somebody, no matter how desperately you want a relationship to work, life can act as an oxidizer and corrode it to pieces. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

Like a fine flower, beautiful to look at but without scent, fine words are fruitless in a man who does not act in accordance with them. ~ Gautama Buddha

I can act ... I do a little writing as well. And I'm good at typing. I'm a creative typist, actually. ~ Chris Colfer

The issue of respect is also useful in guiding parents' interpretation of given behavior. First, they should decide whether an undesirable act represents a direct challenge to their authority . . . to their leadership position as the father or mother. The form of disciplinary action they take should depend on the result of that evaluation. ~ James C. Dobson

But if we never acted except when we were certain our motives were pure, we would never act at all. ~ C.J. Sansom

"Balance" as a verb doesn't mean "stillness," but the constant act of making minor corrections from one side to another to bring one towards a center of stability. ~ Brenda Strong

I've been drawing since I was a little kid, but it's not something I love to do every day. If there's one thing I love to do every day, it'd probably be acting. I can act every day. I'd happily do it, you don't have to pay me. But that's one thing I'd love to do and get paid for. ~ Vinny Guadagnino

There's no place to act in Kansas. You're supressed. ~ Shirley Knight

We think of forgiveness as a thing. An incident. A choice. But forgiveness is a process. A long, exhausting process. A series of choices that we have to make over, and over, and over again.

Because the anger at having been wronged... doesn't vanish because you say to someone, "I forgive you." Rather forgiveness is an obligation you take on not to act punitively on your anger. To interrogate it when it arises, and accept that you have made the choice to be constructive rather than destructive. Not that you have made the choice never to be angry again.

But anger can also make you sick, if you're exposed to it for too long.... The anger itself can be your reason for living, and feeding it can be your only goal.... ~ Elizabeth Bear

What e'er thou art, act well thy part. ~ William Shakespeare

But then when I'm in a halfway successful movie, it irritates the hell out of the critics in New York, because they'd like to kill my pictures if they could. So maybe I'm pretty good in the movie. Then they use all these words like I'm 'surprisingly' good, or 'shockingly enough,' I'm good. It's like I crawled out from under a magazine and they're surprised I can act. ~ Burt Reynolds

It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous. ~ Michael Faraday

For some days I quietly worked out in my own mind the metaphysics of Cosmic Unity. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that it was the living truth. It was logically incontrovertible. It provided for the first time a firm foundation for ethics. It offered mankind the radical change of heart and mind that was our only hope of peace at a time of desperate danger. Only one small problem remained. I must find a way to convert the world to my way of thinking. ~ Freeman Dyson

I deny that one's rational will can be undermined by physical sensation," she said. "One's brain is always in charge." Leo couldn't prevent the mocking smile that rose to his lips. "Good God, Marks. Obviously you've never participated in the act, or you would know that the major organ in charge is not the brain. In fact, the brain ceases working altogether."
- Cat & Leo ~ Lisa Kleypas

I cannot find the perfect person, but I refuse to live my life living a tragic love story based on just sex, and selfish act. ~ Roxy Writer

Memoir writing draws on all aspects of who we are, body, mind and soul. We are challenged to dig deep, to remember, and once again inhabit the skin of who we were and what we have learned. Writing memoir is an act of testimony, witnessing, healing. When you write a memoir, you draw upon layers of your consciousness and discover your true nature, your essential self, and are transformed the process." Linda Joy Meyer ~ Rossandra White

Any play that makes an audience think out of the box, that makes connections to life and names our pain and by doing so makes our pain subject to thinking and the process of understanding, is doing something inherently political. By promoting understanding, by putting experience in context, by making connections between the normal and the rational, theatre is an act of anti-terrorism. It stimulates courage and a survival spirit. In that sense of political, there are a lot of serious plays doing their work in the world. ~ John Lahr

Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life. ~ Woodrow Wilson

Duty and courage had been made animate, and this was all the T'lan Imass were, and had been for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet, without choice, such virtues as duty and courage were transformed into empty, worthless words. Without mortality, hovering like an unseen sword overhead, meaning was without relevance, no matter the nature - or even the motivation behind - an act. Any act. ~ Steven Erikson

Economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgement of value. It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at. It is a science of the means to be applied for attainment of ends chosen, not, to be sure, a science of the choosing of ends. Ultimate decisions, the valuations and the choosing of ends, are beyond the scope of any science. Science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man must act if he wants to attain definite ends. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I'm fortunate enough to act in a TV show that makes me a lot of money so I can pay for my own movies. I don't have to wait for anybody and that's more of what I like doing. But I still think that you don't have to be connected in the industry to make your movie. You just have to write something that is meant to be made cheaply. ~ Mark Duplass

For many years, I used to pray as an act of power, but that was before I had 100% faith in myself. ~ Miguel Angel Ruiz

If we regard the state as the father, and the citizens as children, there are three alternatives. First, the father may be bad and despotic:this, most people will agree, was the case in Czarist Russia. Second, the father may be good, but somewhat tyrannical; this is the way the Communist governments in Russia and China picture themselves. Third, the father may not act as a father at all, for the children have grown up, and there is mutual respect among them. All are now governed by the same rules of behavior (laws): this is the Anglo-American concept of nonpaternalistic humanism and liberty under law. ~ Thomas Szasz

In its outward manifestation, meditation appears to involve either stopping, by parking the body in a stillness that suspends activity, or giving oneself over to flowing movement. In either case, it is an embodiment of wise attention, an inward gesture undertaken for the most part in silence, a shift from doing to simply being. It is an act that may at first seem artificial but that we soon discover, if we keep at it, is ultimately one of pure love for the life unfolding within us and around us. ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn

I feel Him kiss my brow, a chill weight on my forehead. In the kiss is absolution, yes, but understanding as well. Understanding that it is He I serve, not the convent. His divine spark lives within me, a presence that will never leave. And I am but one of the many tools he has at his disposal. If I cannot act
if I refuse to act
that is a choice I am allowed to make. He has given me life, and all I must do to serve Him is live. Fully and with my whole heart. ~ R.L. LaFevers

Falling in love is not an act of will. It is not a conscious choice. No matter how open to or eager for it we may be, the experience may still elude us. Contrarily, the experience may capture us at times when we are definitely not seeking it, when it is inconvenient and undesirable. We are as likely to fall in love with someone with whom we are obviously ill matched as with someone more suitable. Indeed, we may not even like or admire the object of our passion, yet, try as we might, we may not be able to fall in love with a person whom we deeply respect and with whom a deep relationship would be in all ways desirable. This is not to say that the experience of falling in love is immune to discipline. Psychiatrists, for instance, frequently fall in love with their patients, just as their patients fall in love with them, yet out of duty to the patient and their role they are usually able to abort the collapse of their ego boundaries and give up the patient as a romantic object. The struggle and suffering of the discipline involved may be enormous. But discipline and will can only control the experience; they cannot create it. We can choose how to respond to the experience of falling in love, but we cannot choose the experience itself. ~ M. Scott Peck

Someone could be paraphilic in both his erotic target and his favorite sex act. I mean, really, any pellismophilic nebulophile (someone whose most passionate moments involve masturbating in the foggy mist while listening to a person stutter) can see that. ~ Jesse Bering

When I act, I act on behalf of who or what I love. Even when I have to fight against something, it is because of what I value and love. ~ Sharon Weil

Over the years, I have perfected the art of dancing and photographing at the same time: it's a great double act. If you're dancing, you are joining in. If you stand there rigid, you are not in the flow of things. ~ Martin Parr

Beloved, God has never failed to act but in goodness and love. When all means fail-his love prevails. Hold fast to your faith. Stand fast in his Word. There is no other hope in this world. ~ David Wilkerson

To this day, I remain awestruck by the fact that human beings are capable of this type of metamorphosis. We don't have to stay stuck displaying the same personality traits over the course of our lifetime but are free to transform into higher expressions of ourselves. Today I can honestly say that I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that human beings are capable of making radical and lasting change. After a decade of coaching individuals and leading groups, I have discovered that if I don't buy into people's perceptions of who they are and what they are capable of, I can bypass their public personas and see who they are in their highest expression. With a little effort, I can see their magnificence and their potential no matter what they look like or what condition their emotional, spiritual, or financial world is in. I can see through their acts, their personas, their fears and insecurities. I can see who they are apart from the baggage they carry around. The undeniable fact is that underneath all of our public personas, we already are that which we desire to be. Our only job is to see past our own limitations so that we can return to that which we already are. ~ Debbie Ford

We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory. ~ Jane Addams

Only when I follow my love for my objective is it I myself who act. ~ Rudolf Steiner

I used to advise writers to just write their books and it will find a home, and suddenly that didn't seem as certain. I figured it was time to act. I considered a small press through RADAR, my literary non-profit. ~ Michelle Tea

Your king is dead. Your prince lives. . . My name is Aelin Ashryver Galathynius, and I am the Queen of Terrasen. . . Your prince is in mourning. Until he is ready, this city is mine. . . If you loot, if you riot, if you cause one lick of trouble, I will find you, and I will burn you to ash." She lifted a hand, and flames danced at her fingertips. "If you revolt against your new king, if you try to take his castle, then this wall"--she gestured with her burning hand--"will turn to molten glass and flood your streets, your homes, your throats. . . I killed your king. His empire is over. Your slaves are now free people. If I catch you holding on to your slaves, if I hear of any household keeping them captive, you are dead. If I hear of you whipping a slave, or trying to sell one, you are dead. So I suggest that you tell your friends, and families, and neighbors. I suggest that you act like reasonable, intelligent people. And I suggest that you stay on your best behavior until your king is ready to greet you, at which time I swear on my crown that I will yield control of this city to him. If anyone has a problem with it, you can take it up with my court." She motioned behind her. Rowan, Aedion, and Lysandra--bloodied, battered, filthy--grinning like hellions. "Or," Aelin said, the flames winking out on her hand, "you can take it up with me."
Not a word. She wondered whether they were breathing.
But Aelin didn't care as she strode off the platform, back through the gate ~ Sarah J. Maas

And within the computer's innards, a spreading cancer. A self-replicating corruption. A B-pop mutiny of bass and drum and oscillating frequency. Inane quasi poetry glorifying a pointless act of intimacy. ~ Jay Kristoff