Purposeful Behavior Quotes

There are no accidents; success is the result of doing the right thing, in the right way, over and over.

Every action, thought, and feeling is motivated by an intention, and that intention is a cause that exists as one with an effect In this most profound way, we are held responsible for every action, thought, and feeling, which is to say, for our every intention.

Every intentional act is a magical act.

We are so anxious to achieve some particular end that we never pay attention to the psycho-physical means whereby that end is to be gained. So far as we are concerned, any old means is good enough. But the nature of the universe is such that ends can never justify the means. On the contrary, the means always determine the end.

Action without thought is empty. Thought without action is blind.

Things don't just happen, people make them happen

Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.

Questions of motive are very difficult in intelligence analysis.

I knew exactly what I was doing. You can't accidentally take a whole bottle of pills.

Without goals the very concept of intelligence is meaningless

Thought precedes action, action does not always precede thought.

The means prepare the end, and the end is what the means have made of it.

There may be men who act without understanding why. I do not. To listen much, pick out the good and follow it; to see much and ponder it: this comes next to understanding.

When I was a very young lawyer, I had a senior partner who advised me never to get mad, except on purpose.

Human action is purposeful behavior.

There are for man only two principles available for a mental grasp of reality, namely, those of teleology and causality. What cannot be brought under either of these categories is absolutely hidden to the human mind. An event not open to an interpretation by one of these two principles is for man inconceivable and mysterious. Change can be conceived as the outcome either of the operation of mechanistic causality or of purposeful behavior; for the human mind there is no third way available.

One's action ought to come out of an achieved stillness: not to be a mere rushing on.

I have meant what I have done. Or I have often meant what I have done. Or I have sometimes meant what I have done. Or I have tried to mean what I was doing.

Let no act be done without purpose.

Let us distinguish between acting intentionally and acting deliberately or on purpose, as far as this can be done by attending to what language can teach us.

This is what consciousness does: it sets the goals, and the rest of the system learns how to meet them.

Remember, it is not about luck. It is about doing the right things the right way.

Life is teleology par excellence; it is the intrinsic striving towards a goal, and the living organism is a system of directed aims which seek to fulfill themselves.

What is now an act of reason, was but blind impulse.

A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.