Quotes & Sayings About Tilting At Windmills

In 1568 the Dutch, who were mainly Protestant, revolted against their Catholic Spanish overlord. At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. The secret of Dutch success was credit. The Dutch burghers, who had little taste for combat on land, hired mercenary armies to fight the Spanish for them. The Dutch themselves meanwhile — Yuval Noah Harari

Tilting at windmills hurts you more than the windmills. — Robert A. Heinlein

At first the rebels seemed to play the role of Don Quixote, courageously tilting at invincible windmills. Yet within eighty years the Dutch had not only secured their independence from Spain, but had managed to replace the Spaniards and their Portuguese allies as masters of the ocean highways, build a global Dutch empire, and become the richest state in Europe. The secret of Dutch success was credit. The — Yuval Noah Harari

There are times when each of us has to have some gumption to take a stand as to what we wish to preserve or change in order to maintain our self-respect and not be as "a reed shaken with the wind" (Matt. 11:7) ... We lose much credibility and strength, and we risk being weighed on an uneven balance, when, Don Quixote-like, we go around "tilting windmills". — James E. Faust

This is what we have all come to Cannes for: for something different, experimental, a tilting at windmills, a great big pole-vault over the barrier of normality by someone who feels that the possibilities of cinema have not been exhausted by conventional realist drama. — Peter Bradshaw

You cannot change the world with ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they're successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honours; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can anyone who is so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I'm the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills. — Umberto Eco

Lieutenant Tindall told me I'd find you up here tilting at putrid windmills. Now I know what he meant. — Steve Hockensmith

I am beginning to understand why I came here today. I needed to escape the cluttered struggles of everyday life, the battles born of a false sense of consequence. I spend so much time waving a sword in the air; I am exhausted and want to lay my weapon down. Like Don Quixote, I have been tilting at windmills. - Essay: Walden, Revisited — Faye Rapoport DesPres

To say that the vote fraud conspiracy theorists are tilting at windmills is an understatement. They're using a legitimate public process to pursue an agenda that is, at best, grasping at straws and, at worse, partisan. — George Voinovich