Who said this, and what it means
This line is credited to Amelia Earhart, the aviator known for a career built almost entirely on deciding to attempt things other people considered too risky. The quote in full separates two different challenges: making the decision to act, which is the genuinely hard part, and everything that follows it, which mostly just requires persistence.
It reframes tenacity as the easier half of the equation — most people can keep going once they’ve started. The harder moment is the one before that, deciding to start at all.