These attempt quotes will inspire you. Attempt to make an effort to achieve or complete (something, typically a difficult task or action) or an act of trying to achieve something, typically one that is unsuccessful or not certain to succeed.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging attempt quotes, attempt sayings, and attempt proverbs.
Best Attempt Quotes
- “A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
- “It’s the little things that you do that can make a big difference. What are you attempting to accomplish? What little thing can you do today that will make you more effective? You are probably only one step away from greatness.” ~ Bob Proctor
- “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.” ~ Horace Mann
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“It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.” ~ William Cobbett
- “A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.” ~ Gaston Bachelard
- “Pornography is pornography, what is there to see? Movies are attempting to destroy something that’s supposed to be the most beautiful thing a man and a woman can have by making it cheap and common. It’s what you don’t see that’s attractive.” ~ Nancy Reagan
- “I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.” ~ John Stuart Mill
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“What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail?” ~ Robert H. Schuller
- “Little progress can be made by merely attempting to repress what is evil. Our great hope lies in developing what is good.” ~ Calvin Coolidge
- “The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail.” ~ John Wesley Powell
- “And therefore we must seek dialogue in this networked world. We must ask which voice was actually attempting to make itself heard and saw no other possibility of gaining a hearing. To that extent, for a while this also represented a forced opening of a cosmopolitan view.” ~ Ulrich Beck
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“There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.” ~ Friedrich August von Hayek
- “You can never stop and as older people, we have to learn how to take leadership from the youth and I guess I would say that this is what I’m attempting to do right now.” ~ Angela Davis
- “Much of my work in this period was concerned with exploring the logic of economic models, but also with attempting to reconcile the models with everyday observation.” ~ Joseph Stiglitz
- “Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.” ~ Horatio Nelson
- “A Republic without parties is a complete anomaly. The histories of all popular governments show absurd is the idea of their attempting to exist without parties.” ~ Franklin Pierce
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“The person attempting to travel two roads at once will get nowhere.” ~ Xunzi
- “Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.” ~ Henry A. Kissinger
- “Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE” ~ Mark Twain
- “The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.” ~ John Jay Chapman
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“If I had more skill in what I’m attempting, I wouldn’t need so much courage” ~ Ashleigh Brilliant
- “Well, the odds must be against anybody being able to fly around the world in a balloon on the first attempt. All of us who are attempting to go around the world in balloons are effectively flying in experimental craft because these craft cannot be tested.” ~ Richard Branson
- “Any people attempting to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and by officers of their own appointment, are in direct rebellion against the kingdom of God” ~ Orson Pratt
- “Balancing a nominal budget will solve nothing, and attempting to achieve such a spurious balance will produce much mischief.” ~ William Vickrey
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“Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches.” ~ Harold Evans
- “Attempting to write vocal oriented songs to me felt like going through the motions and if you are going to go through the motions you might as well just do any gig that caused you to do repetitive motions like banging a hammer or serving fries.” ~ Ronnie Montrose
- “After Nixon resigned in 1974, he engaged in a very aggressive war with history, attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily, history won, largely because of Nixon’s tapes.” ~ Bob Woodward
- “When you use music to worship you are not attempting to entertain.” ~ Cliff Richard
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“It is strange to reflect how much energy is thrown away in attempting to know the unknowable.” ~ Joseph Barber Lightfoot
- “We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present: unemployment, inflation… but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America.” ~ Barbara Jordan
- “When my job was attempting to predict future economic developments for the Shell oil company, I was frequently reminded of an Arabic saying: ‘Those who claim to foresee the future are lying, even if by chance they are later proved right.'” ~ Vince Cable
- “It is also difficult to articulate the subtleties in cinema, because there aren’t words or metaphors which describe many of the emotions you are attempting to evoke.” ~ Conrad Hall
- “Instead of stubbornly attempting to use surrealism for purposes of subversion, it is necessary to try to make of surrealism something as solid, complete and classic as the works of museums.” ~ Salvador Dali
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“As the fly bangs against the window attempting freedom while the door stands open, so we bang against death ignoring heaven.” ~ Douglas Horton
- “Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.” ~ M. Scott Peck
- “At the same time, it is obvious that clinicians in Haiti are faced with different, and, in fact, greater, challenges when attempting to treat complications of HIV disease.” ~ Paul Farmer
- “But I have always – ever since The Accidental Woman – written novels about individuals attempting to make choices in the context of situations over which they have no control.” ~ Jonathan Coe
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“It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.” ~ Arthur Machen
- “That’s always an interesting concept when you try to make your dream into a reality and you come up against the facts of exactly what it is you’re attempting to do.” ~ Karl Urban
- “In approaching our subject it will be best, without attempting to shorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama, to start directly from the facts, and to collect from them gradually an idea of Shakespearean Tragedy.” ~ Andrew Coyle Bradley
- “It just seems that you were talking positively about McDonald’s, that they are… attempting this healthy lifestyle, and yet when we’re talking right now… it seems that you’re saying they need to make more responsibility.” ~ Maria Bartiromo
- “At a time when we are facing threats from nations such as North Korea and Iran, and attempting to convince others such as India and Pakistan to become responsible nuclear powers, it is vital that America reclaims the leadership we once had on arms control.” ~ Ellen Tauscher
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“A biblical false prophet was a servant of the devil attempting to lead people away from the truth.” ~ Walter Martin
- “Everything that I’m attempting to do is based on my understanding of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and what he wanted for his people.” ~ Louis Farrakhan
- “I later spent… five to eight months in hospitals in New Jersey, always on an involuntary basis, and always attempting a legal argument for release.” ~ John Forbes Nash
- “I love to have battles of the wits with people that can dish fast and dirty – and it leads to problems occasionally, ’cause I can sound mean without attempting to be mean.” ~ Alton Brown
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“What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?” ~ Vincent Van Gogh
- “Every time you work, you have to do it all over again, to rid yourself of this dross. I suppose for a person who is not an artist or not attempting art, it is not dross, because it is the common exchange of everyday life.” ~ Carl Andre
- “Each man is capable of doing one thing well. If he attempts several, he will fail to achieve distinction in any.” ~ Plato
- “Sometimes you just have to try, even if you know it won’t work.” ~ Junot Diaz
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“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “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
- “But I tried, didn’t I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.” ~ Ken Kesey
- “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
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“Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “Never say ‘I could have done that,’ because you didn’t.” ~ Karim Rashid
- “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
- “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
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“If you can be the best, then why not try to be the best?” ~ Garrett Morgan
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“I am determined to defend my rights and maintain my freedom or sell my life in the attempt.” ~ Nathanael Greene
- “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
- “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
