“Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can. . . . Als ich kann."”

— Romain Rolland

Gottfried to Jean-Christophe. Part 3: Ada
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Youth (1904)
Context: Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can.... Als ich kann.

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Romain Rolland 43

French author 1866–1944

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“Be reverent before the dawning day. Do not think of what will be in a year, or in ten years. Think of to-day. Leave your theories. All theories, you see, even those of virtue, are bad, foolish, mischievous. Do not abuse life. Live in to-day. Be reverent towards each day. Love it, respect it, do not sully it, do not hinder it from coming to flower. Love it even when it is gray and sad like to-day. Do not be anxious. See. It is winter now. Everything is asleep. The good earth will awake again. You have only to be good and patient like the earth. Be reverent. Wait. If you are good, all will go well. If you are not, if you are weak, if you do not succeed, well, you must be happy in that. No doubt it is the best you can do. So, then, why will? Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can.... Als ich kann.”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Gottfried to Jean-Christophe. Part 3: Ada
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Youth (1904)

“You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.”

Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor

Address to Polaroid employees at Symphony Hall in Boston, Massachusetts (5 February 1960), as quoted in Insisting on the Impossible : The Life of Edwin Land (1998) by Victor K. McElheny, p. 198
Context: The world is a scene changing so rapidly that it takes every bit of intuitive ability you have, every brain cell each one of you has, to make the sensible decision about what to do next. You cannot rely upon what you have been taught. All you have learned from history is old ways of making mistakes. There is nothing that history can tell you about what we must do tomorrow. Only what we must not do.

“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to,
when all they need is one reason why they can”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

“He always asked, why thus? why this way, not another way? I answered: Because in what we do daily and in the way we do it, we enact the gods. He said: Then the gods are only what we do. I said: In what we do rightly, the gods are.”

Ursula K. Le Guin book Four Ways to Forgiveness

"A Man of the People", p. 106
Four Ways to Forgiveness (1995)

“We do what we have to so we can do what we want to.”

Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer

“We, we respect very much what the American want to do uh…but, you know sometime the American way of life and the…uh American democracy maybe uh cannot work in a country like mine, you know, in South Vietnam. Uh…so, we, we can have the principle and adapt that in the country but we cannot adapt what you have here, you know, eh two houses, all that stuff, you know, and changing the president every four year. You have many people here who can be leader of the country. We have a few in Vietnam, a few who can uh you know uh lead the country because education, because the training, because all that uh, background that we must have, you know.”

Nguyen Khanh (1927–2013) South Vietnamese soldier

Evaluation of democracy and the American presence in the South
1980s, Interview with Nguyen Khanh (1981)

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

“We do what we can do means what exactly means, that we do what we can do.”

Mariano Rajoy (1955) Spanish politician

26 June, 2017
As President, 2017
Source: Vozópuli http://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/Rajoy-Conteste-senor-Barcenas-telefono_2_1048115186.html

“We're not doing what we do because of sanctions. We're doing what we do because we believe it is right.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

As quoted in Freedom in the World: Political Rights & Civil Liberties, 1990-1991 https://web.archive.org/web/20180917224837/https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Freedom_in_the_World_1990-1991_complete_book.pdf (1991), New York: Freedom House, p. 16
1990s

“Only when we have done all we knew to do can we wait by faith for God to do what only He can do.”

James MacDonald (1960) American pastor

Source: Always True (Moody, 2011), p. 98

“Why be angry because of what you cannot do? We all have to do what we can. . . . Als ich kann."”

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Romain Rolland 43

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