Attempting Quotes - Page 3

• Save the Children is often told that its aims are impossible - that there has always been child suffering and there always will be. We know. It's impossible only if we make it so. It's impossible only if we refuse to attempt it.

  Eglantyne Jebb

  Children, Knowing, Suffering

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• But I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.

  Ken Kesey

  Mcmurphy, Effort, Trying

  "Fictional character: R.P. McMurphy". One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, www.imdb.com. 1975.

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• Never say 'I could have done that,' because you didn't.

  Karim Rashid

  Inspirational, Trying, Done

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• While people are often content to criticize and blame others for what goes wrong, surely we should at least attempt to put forward constructive ideas. One thing is for certain: given human beings' love of truth, justice, peace, and freedom, creating a better, more compassionate world is a genuine possibility. The potential is there.

  Dalai Lama

  Love, Inspirational, Wisdom

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• Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.

  Samuel Johnson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Samuel Johnson, Francis William Blagdon (1811). “The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia”, p.42

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• It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Change, Positive

  Theodore Roosevelt (2012). “The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses”, p.2, Courier Corporation

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• If you can be the best, then why not try to be the best?

  Garrett Morgan

  Success, African American, Trying

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• When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. "This is often considered to be man's first attempt at a calendar" she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. 'My question to you is this - what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar. It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women's contributions?

  Sandi Toksvig

  Women, Past, Feminist

  "Sandi Toksvig's top 10 unsung heroines" by Sandi Toksvig, www.theguardian.com. October 28, 2009.

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• The Zionists indeed learnt well from the Nazis. So well that it seems that their morally repugnant treatment of the Palestinians, and their attempts to destroy Palestinian society within Israel and the occupied territories, reveals them as basically Nazis with beards and black hats.

  Norman Finkelstein

  Israel, Black, Society

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• To speak of ‘limits to growth’ under a capitalistic market economy is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’ capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the system as a system of endless growth.

  Murray Bookchin

  Nature, Warrior, Breathing

  "Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future". Book by Murray Bookchin, 1990.

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• I think we communicate only too well, in our silence, in what is unsaid, and that what takes place is a continual evasion, desperate rearguard attempts to keep ourselves to ourselves. Communication is too alarming. To enter into someone else's life is too frightening. To disclose to others the poverty within us is too fearsome a possibility.

  Harold Pinter

  Life, Fear, Communication

  Harold Pinter (2009). “Various Voices: Sixty Years of Prose, Poetry, Politics, 1948-2008”

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• What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty ... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.

  Elbridge Gerry

  Freedom, Mean, Army

  House of Representatives, Amendments to the Constitution, August 17, 1789.

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• One of my rules is: Never TRY to do anything. Just do it.

  Ani DiFranco

  Motivational, Change, Positivity

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• I am determined to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt.

  Nathanael Greene

  Life, Freedom, Rights

  Nathanael Greene, Richard K. Showman, Rhode Island Historical Society (2005). “The papers of General Nathanael Greene”

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• I consider space to be a material. The articulation of space has come to take precedence over other concerns. I attempt to use sculptural form to make space distinct.

  Richard Serra

  Space, Sculpture, Use

  Kynaston McShine, Richard Serra, Lynne Cooke, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (2007). “Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years”, p.77, The Museum of Modern Art

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• Keep alive within you and bring under wise control that courage which makes you long to undertake great works, which others might consider it folly to attempt.

  Mary Euphrasia Pelletier

  Inspirational, Wise, Courage

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• The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit.

  Wade Davis

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Unique

  "The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World". Book by Wade Davis, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 1, 2009.

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• Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the mystery.

  This is quotes copyright © By Pumpkin Limited

  Ram Dass

  Mind, Religion, Spirituality

  Ram Dass (2007). “One-Liners: A Mini-Manual for a Spiritual Life”, p.26, Harmony

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• Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Crush, Mistake, Believe

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• Bonhoeffer knew that twisting the Truth to sell it more effectively was inexcusable. For Bonhoeffer the challenge was to present the Truth as purely as possible without attempting to help it along or dress it up.

  Eric Metaxas

  Challenges, Dresses, Helping

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• Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt

  Immanuel Kant

  Beautiful, Pain, Sublime

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• Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason, in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said, that if there had been no God, mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.

  George Washington

  Imagine, Reason, Said

  George Washington (1855). “Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious”, p.342

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• Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

  Samuel Johnson

  Funny, Life, Being Yourself

  1750-2 In The Rambler.

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• If you are attempting the impossible, you will fail.

  Robert Heller

  Business, Impossible, Failing

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• The greatest mistake physicians make is that they attempt to cure the body without attempting to cure the mind, yet the mind and the body are one and should not be treated separately!

  Plato

  Mistake, Mind, Physicians

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