A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.
Interpretation
Action is essential for success; overthinking can hinder progress.
This quote emphasizes the necessity of taking action in order to achieve results. It suggests that waiting for perfect conditions or over-analyzing situations can prevent a person from being effective, and that just as breathing is a natural action, so should be our propensity to act without hesitation in pursuit of our goals.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage employees to take initiative.
Monet's garden must be included with his works, because he combined the magic of an adaptation of nature with the work of a painter of light. An extension of the studio into the openair, with color tones lavishly spread out on all sides to exercise the eye with seductive vibrations, from which a feverishly aroused retina expects unquenchable joy.
I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace is an interlude during war.
When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves he isn't a man of action.
America is the only nation in history which miraculously has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilization.
War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. You must act as you breathe.
The key isn't winning -- or losing, it's making the attempt. I may never be what I ought to be, want to be -- but how will I know unless I try? Sure, it's scary, but what's the alternative? Stagnation - A safer, more terrible form of death. Not of the body, but of the spirit. An animal knows what it is, and accepts it. A man may know what he is -- but he questions. He dreams. He strives. Changes. Grows.
In speaking to you men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.
Brethren, do something; do something, do something! While societies and unions make constitutions, let us win souls. I pray you, be men of action all of you. Get to work and quit yourselves like men. Old Suvarov's idea of war is mine: `Forward and strike! No theory! Attack! Form a column! Charge bayonets! Plunge into the center of the enemy! Our one aim is to win souls; and this we are not to talk about, but do in the power of God!'
If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today
It is not too late. You are not too old. You are right on time-And you are better than you know.
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