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.
'Whiplash' scared me. I feel you should only do projects that scare you to some degree. I get motivated by those sorts of feelings.
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.
It is very dangerous to have your self-worth riding on your results as an athlete.
If you're sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward.
If you don't feel you're reaching something new, then don't do it.
I've never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline
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