Dalai Lama Quotes

There is always a gap between intention and action.

What people CAN do is very different from what they WILL do.

Motives are often more important than actions

All human behavior has a reason. All behavior is solving a problem.

If what the philosophers say be true, that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain, so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.

There are more reasons for people's actions than the number of actions that are actually set in motion.

I shall consider human actions and desires in exactly the same manner, as though I were concerned with lines, planes and solids.

Every action needs to be prompted by a motive. To know and to will are two operations of the human mind. Discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind.

INTENTION, n. The mind's sense of the prevalence of one set of influences over another set; an effect whose cause is the imminence, immediate or remote, of the performance of an involuntary act.

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.

The human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.

Action helps you think and raises your self-esteem. Good luck happens when you're in action. Ask yourself, "Does this go toward or away from what I want?" There's an animal in us, and it has great instincts. Scan for a desire and follow it. Set a goal, any goal, and start doing everything you can think of to achieve it.

Not to understand the doer is to have no certain knowledge of what has been done, or why it was undertaken

Motivation is motive in action.

But thought is one thing, the deed is another, and the image of the deed still another: the wheel of causality does not roll between them.

Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.

Although every man believes that his decisions and resolutions involve the most multifarious factors, in reality they are mere oscillation between flight and longing.

Everyone is motivated a little or a lot to do something or nothing. Motivation is the internalized drive toward the dominant thought of the moment. By definition, motivation is "motive in action."

Human action is governed largely by instinct and emotion.

The important thing about human beings is not what they do, but why they do it.

Each decision we make, each action we take, is born out of an intention.

The appearance of things to the mind is the standard of every action to man.

It is impossible to describe any human action if one does not refer to the meaning the actor sees in the stimulus as well as in the end his response is aiming at.

Our motives and thoughts ultimately influence our actions.

Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.