These are words of secular sentiment. They are words of untruth. If we can truly understand, then action will naturally follow. Action that is not based on understanding is simply deluded action.
Understanding is indeed difficult.
Shakyamuni renounced it. Having left this practice, he started to meditate under a tree. Here it is important to note that simply meditating under a tree was not considered a full-fledged practice in his time. Thus the co-practitioners whom he had left behind mocked him, saying, Siddhartha has become a backslider and taken to an easier lifestyle. But it was this meditation, which seemed an idle action to the religious practitioners of his time, that led Shakyamuni to Awakening.