Quotes on INITIATIVE

"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don't quit."
— Conrad Hilton
Hilton Hotels


"Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome. You must be willing to fire."
— T. Boone Pickens


"The right man is the one who seizes the moment."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


"A man who has to be convinced to act before he acts is not a man of action. You must act as you breathe."
— Georges Clemmanceau


"Their comes a moment when you have to stop revving up the car and shove it into gear."
— David Mahoney


"I would rather regret the things I have done than the things I have not."
— Lucille Ball


"If you don't make dust, you eat dust."
— Motto of Jack A. MacAllister


"If there is a trait which does characterize leaders it is opportunism. Successful people are very often those who steadfastly refuse to be daunted by disadvantage and have the ability to turn disadvantage to good effect. They are people who seize opportunity and take risks. Leadership then seems to be a matter of personality and character."
— John Viney
Drive


"Do not lie in a ditch, and say God help me; use the lawful tools He hath lent thee."
— English Proverb


"Most people spend more time planning their grocery shopping than designing their future. The basic difference between people who live their dreams and those who only dream about how they would live, are the accuracy of their plans, their ability to generate new ideas, and their ability to take action."
— Unknown


"Luck comes to a man who puts himself in the way of it. You went where something might be found and you found something, simple as that."
— Louis L'Amour
To the Far Blue Mountains


"Eagles don't flock."
— Ross Perot


"A good plan implemented today is better than a perfect plan implemented tomorrow."
— George Patton


"Things may come to those who wait, but only things left by those who hustle."
— attributed to Abraham Lincoln


"Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


"What we think or what we know or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence, The only consequence is what we do."
— John Ruskin


"Even if you're on the right track you'll get run over if you just sit there."
— Will Rogers


"An idea is worthless unless you use it."
— John Maxwell
Injoy, Inc.


"Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
— William Jennings Bryan


"No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered with a searching but at the same time a steady eye."
— Winston Churchill


"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to meet it."
— Jonathan Winters


"Success comes to the person who does today what you were thinking about doing tomorrow."
— unknown


"Everyone who's ever taken a shower has an idea. It's the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference."
— Nolan Bushnell
Founder of Atari


"Don't wait for your ship to come in; swim out to it."
— Unknown


"You can't cross a sea by merely staring into the water."
— Rabindranath Tagore
1913 Nobel laureate for literature


"There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
— William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar


"Anything worth doing is worth doing now!"
— Ralph Stayer


"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."
— Will Rogers


"If opportunity doesn't knock - build a door."
— Milton Berle


"You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there."
— Edwin Louis Cole


"Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory."
— General George S. Patton, Jr.


"Let's make a dent in the universe."
— Steve Jobs


"You have to recognize that every 'out front' maneuver you make is going to be lonely, but if you feel entirely comfortable, then you're not far enough ahead to do any good. That warm sense of everything going well is usually the body temperature at the center of the herd."
— John Masters


"The secret to getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one."
— Mark Twain


"Everything you want is just outside your comfort zone."
— Robert Allen


"If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I'd say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act."
— Lee J. Iacocca


"Leaders are problem solvers by talent and temperament, and by choice. For them, the new information environment—undermining old means of control, opening up old closets of secrecy, reducing the relevance of ownership, early arrival, and location—should seem less a litany of problems than an agenda for action. Reaching for a way to describe the entrepreneurial energy of his fabled editor Harold Ross, James Thurber said" 'He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.' That's the appropriate posture for a knowledge executive."
— Harland Cleveland


"One today is worth two tomorrows."
— Ben Franklin


"If you can't feed 1,000 people, then feed one."
— Mother Teresa


"Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


"Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value."
— Jim Rohn


"Do not wait for life. Do not long for it. Be aware, always and at every moment, that the miracle is in the here and now."
— Marcel Proust


"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."
— Leonardo Da Vinci


"There is only one time that is important - NOW! It is the most important time because it is the only time we have any power over."
— Attributed to Leo Tolstoy


"Opportunity does not knock. You have to find it."
— Sumner Redstone


"Take stands, take risks, take responsibility."
— Muriel Siebert


"You create opportunities by performing, not complaining."
— Muriel Siebert