Futile Attempt Quotes & Sayings

Creative, exploratory learning requires peers currently puzzled about the same terms or problems. Large universities make the futile attempt to match them by multiplying their courses, and they generally fail since they are bound to curriculum, course structure, and bureaucratic administration. In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern. — Ivan Illich

Nothing seems to satisfy. Not politics, not education, not material goods. Some who refuse to turn their hearts toward God have created the New Age movement, with all of its aberrations. This is actually not new but only the latest attempt by man to place something other than Christ inside himself in a futile attempt to satisfy spiritual longings. — Billy Graham

Every sin is an act of cosmic treason, a futile attempt to dethrone God in His sovereign authority. — R.C. Sproul

And when I'd lost him this time, to the sea, I'd remembered the sense of him beside me, warm and solid in my bed, and the rhythm of his breathing. The light across the bones of his face in moonlight and the flush of his skin in the rising sun. I could hear him breathe when I lay in bed alone in my room at Chestnut Street
slow, regular, never stopping
even though I knew it HAD stopped. The sound would comfort me, then drive me mad with the knowledge of loss, so I pulled the pillow hard over my head in a futile attempt to shut it out
only to emerge into the night of the room, thick with woodsmoke and candle wax and vanished light, and be comforted to hear it once more. — Diana Gabaldon

Every year the State will be the dog that chases its own tail ... engaging in a futile attempt to close a perpetual budget gap. — Richard J. Codey

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life.
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die. — Marcel Proust

There is, I think, nothing in the world more futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one has not yet decided what the task is. — Alexander Meiklejohn

Hildebrand, too, challenged the ideals of scientific naturalism by an appeal to the psychology of perception: if we attempt to analyze our mental images to discover their primary constituents, we will find them composed of sense data derived from vision and from memories of touch and movement. A sphere, for instance, appears to the eye as a flat disk; it is touch which informs us of the properties of space and form. Any attempt on the part of the artist to eliminate this knowledge is futile, for without it he would not perceive the world at all. His task is, on the contrary, to compensate for the absence of movement in his work by clarifying his image and thus conveying not only visual sensations but also those memories of touch which enable us to reconstitute the three-dimensional form in our minds. — E.H. Gombrich

The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable. — Theodore Dreiser

I remember how covered in blood Rhys was. All over his shirt, his jeans, caked on his neck, his hands. I didn't even think about it then, but it must have belonged to his mother, father. For seven days, he wore their deaths and he never said a word to any of us about it. I feel so bad for him and I don't know how to tell him, so I reach for his hand and hold it as hard as I can, crushing his fingers in mine. It's a futile attempt to redirect his pain. He lets me hurt him for a few minutes before gently pulling away. — Courtney Summers

I have endeavoured to show that no absolute structural line of demarcation, wider than that between the animals which immediately succeed us in the scale, can be drawn between the animal world and ourselves; and I may add the expression of my belief that the attempt to draw a physical distinction is equally futile, and that even the highest faculties of feeling and of intellect begin to germinate in lower forms of life. — Thomas Huxley

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt. — E. M. Forster

One might be led to question whether the scientists acted wisely in presenting the statesmen of the world with this appalling problem. Actually there was no choice. Once basic knowledge is acquired, any attempt at preventing its fruition would be as futile as hoping to stop the earth from revolving around the sun. — Enrico Fermi

In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others. — Brennan Manning

The human animal is a fascinating beast. Watching people and trying to learn how and why they do things, and to engage in the somewhat futile attempt to explain them ... it's my reason for living I guess ... to ask 'why?'. I don't know what else to do with myself. In some strange way it's probably an attempt to understand myself and my own relationship to the world. — Andrew Neel

We have tried everything to get rid of suffering. We have gone everywhere to get rid of suffering. We have bought everything to get rid of it. We have ingested everything to get rid of it. Finally, when one has tried enought, there arises the possibility of spiritual maturity with the willingness to stop the futile attempt to get rid of it and, instead, to actually experience suffering. In that momentous instant, there is the realization of that which is beyond suffering, of that which is untouched by suffering. There is the realization of who one truly is.
-Gangaji — Gangaji

Give yourself freedom to grow through love, as love is the most natural direction for humans to grow, just as every tree grows upward towards the sky. Don't try to control the way that love moves, as any attempt will be futile, for love grows like the branches, wildly growing by the laws of nature, rather than by human rational. Let love grow by her own nature. — Forrest Curran

Abstraction is an exercise in a pre-assured failure. It is a futile attempt to communicate the non-communicable — Derek R. Audette

In my years of global travels, I have seen a world in pain ... Without God's guidance, our response to suffering is a futile attempt to find solutions to conditions that cannot be solved. — Billy Graham

It was ludicrous to think that we could just talk our way out of shame, that shame was necessary, that it prevented us from repeating shameful actions and that it motivated us to say we were sorry and to seek forgiveness and to empathize with our fellow humans and to feel the pain of self-loathing which motivated some of us to write books as a futile attempt at atonement, and shame also helped, I told my friend, to fuck up relationships and fucked-up relationships are the life force of books and movies and theatre so sure, let's get rid of shame but then we can kiss art goodbye too. — Miriam Toews

I say His name in a futile attempt to understand. "But it's not your job to understand." That's me who answers. God never says anything. Tou think you're the only one he never answers? — Markus Zusak

I like to watch mankind in its futile attempt to understand the unknown, when they don't even understand that which they know. — Terrence Howard

The attempt to make the consumption of beer criminal is as silly and as futile as if you passed a law to send a man to jail for eating cucumber salad. — Stephen Leacock

To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity. — Jose Marti

It would be futile to attempt to fit women into a masculine pattern of attitudes, skills and abilities and disastrous to force them to suppress their specifically female characteristics and abilities by keeping up the pretense that there are no differences between the sexes. — Arianna Huffington

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden. — Elizabeth Bowen

The traffic was heavy, carriages, cabs, wagons, carts of every description passing by, splashing the water out of the gutters, wheels hissing on the wet road, horses dripping, sodden hides dark. Drivers sat hunched with collars up and hats down in a futile attempt to keep the cold rain from running down their necks, hands clenched on the reins. — Anne Perry

An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy. — John B. S. Haldane

Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three. — Swami Vivekananda

Writing is a futile attempt to preserve what disappears moment by moment. All that remains of my mother is what I remember and what I have written for and about her. Eventually that is all that will remain of [my husband] and me. Writing sometimes feels frivolous and sometimes sacred, but memory is one of my strongest muses. I serve her with my words. So long as people read, those we love survive however evanescently. As do we writers, saying with our life's work, Remember. Remember us. Remember me. — Marge Piercy

We are speeding up our lives and working harder in a futile attempt to buy the time to slow down and enjoy it. — Paul Hawken

This criticism of Wolffian monism is by no means Kant's own accomplishment. In the first introduction to the Critique of Judgment he writes: "Yet it is quite easy to establish, and has in fact been realized for some time, that this attempt to bring unity into that diversity of faculties, though otherwise undertaken in the genuine philosophical spirit, is futile."25 However, if we seek to determine who was the first to have that insight, then both Kant's text and Lehmann's — Anonymous

When Marre was two, I was in line at a crowded New York City grocery store, and I gave her a sippy cup of juice in a futile attempt to stop a meltdown. She bellowed at the top of her lungs, "I don't like jews!" Thank God, we live in New York City and my family looks like Hitler's fantasy. Otherwise, that would've been pretty awkward. Jeannie — Jim Gaffigan

It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve. — Bertrand Russell

[I] learned ... that friends are a good source of food and soul when one has not yet gotten the hang of cooking or living (as opposed to dying) alone. That nothing-not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state-will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. I tried all of these things. — Marya Hornbacher

What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile. — Hermann Hesse

In the history of history, there has never been someone with your particular genetic make-up or life experiences. This being the case, we have no reference points with which to compare ourselves, and therefore it is futile to attempt to measure yourself relative to others. — Chris Matakas

They say that depression makes you see everything in a negative light. I disagree. It makes you see things for what they are. It makes you take off the fucking rose-tinted glasses and look around and see the world as it really is- cruel, harsh and unfair. It makes you see people in their true colours- stupid, shallow and self-absorbed. All that ridiculous optimism, all that carpe diem and life-is-what-you-make-of-it. Words, jsut empty words in an attempt to give meaning to an existence taht is both doomed and futile. — Tabitha Suzuma

The instability of a white neighborhood under pressure from the very possibility of integration put the neighborhood into a kind of real estate purgatory. It set off a downward cycle of anticipation, in which worried whites no longer bought homes in white neighborhoods that might one day attract colored residents even if none lived there at the time. Rents and purchase prices were dropped "in a futile attempt to attract white residents," as Hirsch put it. With prices falling and the neighborhood's future uncertain, lenders refused to grant mortgages or made them more difficult to obtain. Panicked whites sold at low prices to salvage what equity they had left, giving the homeowners who remained little incentive to invest any further to keep up or improve their properties. — Isabel Wilkerson

If Christ be a fraud, he was among the most peculiar yet brilliant of frauds in saying that only he was the way, the truth, and the life. This is the importance of grace - some people think that simply being nice and not harming others is morality; others think that following rules and tithing are morality. But without Christ, all moral beliefs ultimately boil down to the one sin which perpetually rails against the concept of grace: man's lawful, religious, and futile attempt at establishing his own righteousness. — Criss Jami