Action Evaluation Quotes

That action is best which procures the greatest happiness.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

Measure a man by his actions fully from the beginning to the end. Don’t take a piece out of my life or a song out of my music and say this is what I’m about because you know better than that.

No action is in itself good or bad, but only such according to convention.

Failing is a judgment that we humans place on a given action. Rather than judgment, substitute this attitude: You cannot fail, you can only produce results.

OUTCOME, n. A particular type of disappointment . . . . judged by the outcome, the result. This is immortal nonsense; the wisdom of an act is to be juded by the light that the doer had when he performed it.

It is circumstance and proper measure that give an action its character, and make it either good or bad.

In fact we say that an intention is good, that is, right in itself, but that an action does not bear any good in itself but proceeds from a good intention. Whence when the same thing is done by the same man at different times, by the diversity of his intention, however, his action is now said to be good, now bad.

You are mistaken, my friend, if you think that a man who is worth anything ought to spend his time weighing up the prospects of life and death. He has only one thing to consider in performing any action - that is, whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, like a good man or a bad one.

If we do wrong and no harm comes of it, we are not thereby justified. If we did evil and good came of it, the evil would be just as evil. It is not the result of the action, but the action itself which God weighs.

If we no longer judge the content of people's actions, but merely their form, then we are entering dangerous times indeed.

Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.

The thinking part of mankind do not form their judgment from events; and their equity will ever attach equal glory to those actions which deserve success, and those which have been crowned with it.