Bertolt Brecht
Playwright, Poet
"Bank robbery is an initiative of amateurs. True professionals establish a bank."
Initiative quotes
Initiative
92 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Muhammad Yunus
Social Entrepreneur
"Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor."
Tony Robbins
Author, Life Coach
"Success comes from taking the initiative and following up or persisting."
Steve Jobs
Entrepreneur
"Let's make a dent in the universe"
Stephen Covey
Author, Speaker
"Taking initiative is a form of self-empowerment."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside initiative — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Initiative quotes (page 1 of 5)
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"Even when other people don’t expect a lot out of you,you have to take the initiative."
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"Government cannot and must not replace private initiative."
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"If initiative is the ability to do the right thing, then efficiency is the ability to do the thing right."
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"Excellence isn’t about working extra hard to do what you’re told. It’s about taking the initiative to do work you decide is worth doing."
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"Real change in society must start from individual initiative."
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"When we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."
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"We must develop knowledge optimization initiatives to leverage our key learnings."
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"It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction."
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"For change to happen in any community, the initiative must come from the individual."
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"What is initiative? I'll tell you: It is doing the right thing without being told."
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"To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin... to set something into motion."
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"This individual does not know where initiative ends and rocket-propelled idiocy begins."
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"In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative."
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"We got a malaria initiative, really a phenomenal time, even though in the early stages there was some uncertainty. Then of course [Barack] Obama, although he had budget constraints, he believed in these things; a lot of new initiatives, including in agriculture."
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"Personal initiative, competitive selection, the profit motive, corrected by failure and the infinite process of good housekeeping and the personal ingenuity-here constitute the life of a free society."
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"Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that's what leaders do. They see something others are ignoring and they jump on it."
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"Initiative is the privilege of picking yourself."
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"No one could become an efficient leader or take the initiative in any great undertaking without belief in himself."
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"Beaurocracy destroys initiative."
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"A hero is someone who, for the general good, takes the initiative to solve an ambiguous problem."
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