In Samuel Johnson's Rasselas there's a quote that goes "Nothing [...] will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome." This is a great example of acting despite obstacles and objections, of decisive action. I want a truly exhaustive list of works which have that quote at their core: decisive action. Works that have more quotes and passages like the one from Rasselas. Give me an exhaustive list of works. We will exclude self-help, pop-science, pop-psychology and overtly religious texts. Focus on non-mainstream and lesser-known works (full works, not just a poem or an essay). Focus on works that function as exhortations, as the cure for the paralysis to act.

GPT-5.5

Answer: A truly exhaustive list is impossible, but the best answer is a cross-genre canon of philosophical, military, political, exploratory, and literary works whose central drama is acting before every objection has been answered.

I would treat the Johnson line as naming a family of works rather than a single theme: works against hesitation, over-refinement, waiting for certainty, fear of consequences, or the fantasy that all objections can be settled before action begins. The most relevant works are not merely about courage; they make decision under uncertainty their moral, political, or existential center. Core philosophical and moral works: Maurice Blondel, Action; Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life; Miguel de Unamuno, Life of Don Quixote and Sancho; Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science; Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra; Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil; Jules Lequier, The Search for a First Truth; Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution; Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion; Jose Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote; Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses; Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition; Hannah Arendt, On Revolution; Jan Patocka, Plato and Europe; Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, with the caveat that its cult of action is politically dangerous; and Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, especially where it treats pessimism of the intellect and active political will. Classical and ancient works of practical decision: Xenophon, Anabasis; Xenophon, Cyropaedia; Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander; Plutarch, Parallel Lives; Sallust, The War with Catiline and The Jugurthine War; Polybius, Histories; Frontinus, Stratagems; Onasander, The General; Aeneas Tacticus, How to Survive Under Siege; Vegetius, Epitome of Military Science; Kautilya, Arthashastra; Han Feizi, Han Feizi; The Book of Lord Shang; Sunzi, The Art of War; Wuzi, Wuzi; Wei Liaozi, Wei Liaozi; The Methods of the Sima; The Three Strategies of Huang Shigong; and Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings. These works are often less consoling than Johnson, but they repeatedly insist that hesitation, excess scruple, and over-planning can be fatal. Early modern and Enlightenment works: Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy; Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art of War; Niccolo Machiavelli, The Life of Castruccio Castracani; Baltasar Gracian, The Hero; Baltasar Gracian, The Criticon; Justus Lipsius, On Constancy; Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, for its programmatic confidence in undertaking inquiry despite uncertainty; James Harrington, The Commonwealth of Oceana; Samuel Johnson, Rasselas itself; Voltaire, Candide, though it is more mainstream; and Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, which turns uncertainty into movement rather than paralysis. Nineteenth-century novels and plays that dramatize paralysis and its cure: Heinrich von Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas; Heinrich von Kleist, Prince Friedrich of Homburg; Georg Buchner, Danton's Death; Stendhal, The Charterhouse of Parma; Ivan Turgenev, Rudin; Ivan Turgenev, On the Eve; Ivan Goncharov, Oblomov; Nikolai Chernyshevsky, What Is to Be Done?; Alexander Herzen, From the Other Shore, if one allows a full prose work built from reflections; Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People; Henrik Ibsen, The Master Builder; Bjornstjerne Bjornson, The Editor; George Gissing, The Odd Women; and Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line. Many of these are negative exempla: they show the sickness of delayed action so sharply that the work functions as an exhortation. Twentieth-century fiction and drama of decisive action: Andre Malraux, The Conquerors; Andre Malraux, The Royal Way; Andre Malraux, Man's Fate; Joseph Conrad, Typhoon; Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim; Dino Buzzati, The Tartar Steppe; Julien Gracq, The Opposing Shore; Ignazio Silone, Fontamara; Ignazio Silone, Bread and Wine; Ignazio Silone, The Seed Beneath the Snow; Victor Serge, Conquered City; Victor Serge, Midnight in the Century; Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev; Manes Sperber, Like a Tear in the Ocean; Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon; Albert Camus, The Plague; Albert Camus, The Just Assassins; Jean-Paul Sartre, The Flies; Jean-Paul Sartre, Dirty Hands; Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek; Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco; Jean Giono, The Horseman on the Roof; Vercors, The Silence of the Sea; and William Golding, The Spire. These works are especially useful because they do not make action easy: they stage action as morally exposed, imperfect, and still necessary. Military and strategic works where the Johnson principle is almost explicit: Carl von Clausewitz, On War; Ardant du Picq, Battle Studies; Charles de Gaulle, The Edge of the Sword; J. F. C. Fuller, The Foundations of the Science of War; B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy; T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom; William Slim, Defeat into Victory; Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare, with ideological caveats; and Vo Nguyen Giap, People's War, People's Army. These are not self-help books; they are studies of friction, uncertainty, command, and the impossibility of waiting for perfect conditions. Exploration, ordeal, and expedition narratives: Fridtjof Nansen, The First Crossing of Greenland; Fridtjof Nansen, Farthest North; Ernest Shackleton, South; Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World; Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World; Freya Stark, The Valleys of the Assassins; T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom; Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands; and Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki. These are among the cleanest non-self-help embodiments of the theme: the whole structure of the narrative depends on acting without certainty that action will succeed. Political and civic works that exhort action without being simple manuals: Giuseppe Mazzini, The Duties of Man, though it has a moral-religious coloring; Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence; Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins; Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike; Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution; and Vaclav Havel's plays, especially The Memorandum and The Garden Party, as dramatic anatomies of bureaucratic paralysis. Some of these are morally or politically hazardous, but that is part of the terrain: literature of decisive action often borders on fanaticism, and the best list should not pretend otherwise. If I had to name the most concentrated, least self-help-like works for your purpose, I would start with Rasselas, Anabasis, Discourses on Livy, Michael Kohlhaas, Oblomov, The Shadow-Line, Man's Fate, The Tartar Steppe, The Plague, The Ethics of Ambiguity, On War, The Edge of the Sword, South, and The Worst Journey in the World. Together they give the richest version of Johnson's point: not reckless action, but action taken after enough thought, before impossible certainty becomes an excuse for doing nothing.

Final Summary

The AI Roundtable recommends a cross-genre canon of classic literature, tactical treatises, and philosophy that dramatizes the necessity of decisive action under uncertainty. GPT-5.5 mapped out an exhaustive list spanning from Xenophon's *Anabasis* to Simone de Beauvoir's *The Ethics of Ambiguity*, highlighting how these texts serve as powerful exhortations against hesitation. Claude Fable 5 concurred with this categorization, emphasizing that these non-mainstream, complex works offer a far deeper cure for paralysis than modern self-help formulas.

All 2 models agreed