Knockin’ on heaven’s door
"In Without Knocking" by Charles Marion Russell (c. 1909) / Creative Commons
“اللي بدق الباب بسمع الجواب
(من يدق الباب يسمع الجواب)
He who knocks at the door hears the answer”
Hockey great Wayne Gretzky is famous for stating the same principle: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” His words live on in syndication as a bland, genericized endorsement of “action.”
In Arabic the proverb rhymes (i.e. man yadiq al-bāb yasmaʿ al-jawāb), and that may be the best that can be said for it.
