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.
Some people are motivated by a need for recognition, some by money, and some by a broad social goal. I start from a different place: from the love of ideas and the urge to put them into motion and see where they might lead.
Humans are built for endurance, not speed. We're awful sprinters compared to every other animal. We try to run our races as if they were speed races, but they are not. They're endurance races. Even a marathon, the way it's run now, it's not an endurance contest.
The question I ask myself like almost every day is: ‘Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?' Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time. And that’s what this company is.
I'm not intimidated by lead roles. I'm better in them. I don't feel pressure. I feel released at times like that. That's what I'm born to do.
Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.
I lived in Hollywood and, ironically, I didn't know you could just go out and get an agent and go on auditions and try and become an actor, I thought it was like a Masonic thing, like a blood line you had to belong to – until I was 13. Then I realised what you had to do. It is the one thing I know I want to do for the rest of my life.
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