"Be sure you are rite then go ahed;” but in kase ov doubt go ahead anny wa - Josh Billings (1818-1885). His Sayings, 39, 1867

To be sure that you are right and then to go ahead is to have a firm belief and reasonable understanding of what you want to achieve, how to achieve it, and that you are capable of achieving it. When you are able to act with certainty that you are right, in the effectiveness or morality of your action, is to give rise to a more certain outcome. Don't half-ass thing, or act in a quailing manner., because to do so is to fail before you have begun. A timid half-action rarely results in success. This is the obvious method which we should most optimally and ideal use for our actions, but it is also an ideal which we only sometimes reach. Disregarding the fact that most of the time your certainty is only an educated guess, even when we do not even have an educated guess about what the right action is, sometimes we find that we need to move anyway. This quote suggests two things to me. The first is that quite often, an action of some sort is better than no action at all. This might be in a job, or for a company, where if you do not improve, then somebody will catch up to you sooner and later to disrupt your position, or this may be in your personal life, where we can easily sink into a habit of doom scrolling on our phones, and passing the days of our lives in a gray haze without end, or this may be in the case of a crisis, where standing still just means that we are going to be hit all the harder by the car, falling piano, or recession. As well, sometimes you will find yourself in situations where not matter what you do, you could hardly make things worse. Thus, there are times it would be a wise decision to move and change, either your actions or the path you are on, not because you know what the right action to take next is, but because you recognize that the path you are already on is not the right one. If you are standing next to an unstable explosive system, then odds are you would be better off just running in a random direction, regardless of that leads to an open plain, a fortified wall, a shallow ditch, or a high cliff - You don't have the time to risk. The best, fastest, and correct action right now is not up or down, east or west, but simply, away. 

The second message which this quote suggests to me is that sometimes close enough is good enough. As you probably noticed, the quote is riddled with misspellings. I don't know why this is, whether the author couldn't spell or because the rules for spelling words weren't as definitive as they are today. However, I do know that I can read the quote - I don't have to reference the dictionary, find the original printing of the source, and discuss and figure out the history of the author, the syntax of the sentence, the etymology of the words. Rather, I read the quote and it makes sense to me; I am able to understand it. Perhaps there are other ways of understanding it, or perhaps there are historical reasons for reading the quote in a different way, but I don't know them. What I can say is that I have a reasonable interpretation of the quote. I am able to discuss it, and someone reading this post would be able to understand why I hold my views on the significance and wisdom of the quote. I may not be entirely correct, but I sincerely doubt that I am entirely incorrect either. As with words, so with actions - We may not always make the absolutely correct and very best decisions, but that does not mean that our decisions were bad. They may be suboptimal and while that is worthy of criticism, it does not necessarily follow that our actions are then also worthy of contempt. It is always easy to look at someone else's action, or to think back on our own actions, and have an extremely negative view of them, to think that we would have, or should have, made an entirely separate decision which would be, we are sure, practically and morally superior to the one that other person made. This quote questions that assertion, and may lead us to ask - If they did not make the right decision, did they at least make a decision which originated from a goal, hope, and effort to do something rite?


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