Futile Effort Quotes

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

Repeating, trying to repeat success - it never gets easier.

Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.

To attempt to advise conceited people is like whistling against the wind.

…would…before he could in any way benefit his friends or the state, come to an untimely end without doing any good to himself or others.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

[Vietnam was] the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He that sows his grain upon marble will have many a hungry belly before his harvest.

You know, I think I did originally have some sort of idea of maybe a Where Eagles Dare kind of mission against impossible odds, but it really sort of died before I had a chance to really go anywhere with it, and then just doing the book was out of the question.

'Yea and I beheld Sisyphus in strong torment, grasping a monstrous stone with both his hands. He was pressing thereat with hands and feet, and trying to roll the stone upward toward the brow of the hill. But oft as he was about to hurl it over the top, the weight would drive him back, so once again to the plain rolled the stone, the shameless thing. And he once more kept heaving and straining, and the sweat the while was pouring down his limbs, and the dust rose upwards from his head.

It is an ironic habit of human beings to run faster when we have lost our way.

If you can do it then why do it?

One way or the other, we?ve always got to chase our tails.

Anxiety and conscience are a powerful pair of dynamos. Between them, they have ensured that I shall work hard, but they cannot ensure that one shall work at anything worthwhile.

It was like trying to bail out an ocean of water with a teaspoon.

The gentleman puts me in mind of an old hen which persists in setting after her eggs are taken away.

I don't think perfection is possible. I think you can attempt to reach perfection, but I don't think it's a possible thing. I think perfection is a moving point, and we spend our artistic lives chasing it.

Alimony is like buying oats for a dead horse.

I made a cold calculation that I wasn’t going to waste time on a futile struggle.

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.

Decades of futile effort have not dampened my bold aspirations to save the nation. Born in a late age, I have not been able to witness the golden rule of Yao and Shun and other sage emperors of ancient China. Instead, my heart grieves at the suffering of the Chinese people under the cruel exploitation of the Tartar Slaves.

A faint endeavor ends in a sure defeat.

The enormous energy of the twentieth century, enough to drive the planet into a new orbit around a happier star, was being expended to maintain this immense motionless pause.

The struggle with evil by means of violence is the same as an attempt to stop a cloud, in order that there may be no rain.