Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words?

Growing up, I constantly heard sayings that emphasized the importance of actions rather than words. We’ve all been told things like “actions speak louder than words” or “show me, don’t tell me,” from which we are taught that our actions are much more valuable than what we say or think.  

However, in our last lecture, we discussed philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, who believes the exact opposite. That is, he advocates the phrase-- “Don’t act. Just think.” Zizek strongly believes that our generation needs to think and come up with new ideas, rather than act.  

Here is Zizek discussing this philosophy

Zizek incorporated this belief into a lot of his answers to the questions posed in the interview that we read. For example, Zizek points out that the Occupy Wall Street movement didn’t have a lot of success because the 99% did not know exactly what they wanted, they didn’t have set demands. Or in other words, they acted (protested) without thinking first. In the video above, Zizek states that, “maybe today we should say, ‘In the twentieth century, we maybe tried to change the world too quickly. The time is to interpret it again, to start thinking.’” (http://bigthink.com/ideas/45126). This has made me wonder which philosophy is correct, do actions really speak louder than words, or should we be thinking, not acting?

I considered these opposite philosophies in terms of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Some people, like Zizek, think the movement was unorganized and didn’t bring about any real and lasting change because it was not thought through (although Zizek does acknowledge that it brought attention to the problems it was protesting). However I feel, in this situation and circumstances surrounding the protests, that without any action the movement would have been completely non-existent. The terms 99% and 1% would not have become infamous both in America and world-wide, and the unsatisfied portion of the population would have remained unknown. Action is still necessary to bring about any real change, especially in America, it just must be thought out thoroughly first. In this case, I think both action and thinking are necessary for success, not one or the other. 

An example of actions versus words can also be found in the Malcom X speech that we read. So what do you think? Which philosophy makes the most sense today?