Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
2
AUTHOR:
Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929)
QUOTATION:
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.
ATTRIBUTION:
GEORGES CLEMENCEAU, conversation with Jean Martet, December 18, 1927.—Clemenceau, The Events of His Life as Told by Himself to His Former Secretary, Jean Martet, trans. Milton Waldman, chapter 11, p. 67 (1930).
