Conversation with Jean Martet (18 December 1927), Ch. 11, p. 167.
Clemenceau, The Events of His Life (1930)
Context: 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.
“When a man asks himself what is meant by action he proves that he isn't a man of action. Action is a lack of balance. In order to act you must be somewhat insane. A reasonably sensible man is satisfied with thinking.”
Conversation with Jean Martet (1 January 1928), Ch. 12
Clemenceau, The Events of His Life (1930)
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Georges Clemenceau 33
French politician 1841–1929Related quotes
Source: The King Must Die (1958)
On Mahatma Gandhi<!-- p. 506 (1949) / p. 310 (1961) -->
Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)
Context: I knew that Gandhiji usually acts on instinct (I prefer to call it that than the "inner voice" or an answer to prayer) and very often that instinct is right. He has repeatedly shown what a wonderful knack he has of sensing the mass mind and of acting at the psychological moment. The reasons which he afterward adduces to justify his action are usually afterthoughts and seldom carry one very far. A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.
“Think like a man of action, and act like a man of thought.”
Henri Bergson, as quoted in The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life (1950), p. 442; this only seems to have become attributed to Sallust in the early 21st century.
Misattributed
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness
Kerry v. Smith & Warden [1967] 1 QB 347.
Judgments
“I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.”
Je dirais qu'il faut agir en homme de pensée et penser en homme d'action.
Speech at the Descartes Conference http://books.google.com/books?id=BynXAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Je+dirais+qu'il+faut+agir+en+homme+de+pens%C3%A9e+et+penser+en+homme+d'action%22&pg=PA1579#v=onepage in Paris (1937)
Quoted in The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life (1950), p. 442, as "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
“The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his action.”
Speech at the Hatch Memorial Shell, Boston, Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in The Last Days of Patton (1981), p. 85, by Ladislas Farago and The Patton Papers: 1940-1945 (1974), p. 721, edited by Martin Blumenson.