Adventures in the Arabic Dictionary

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Knockin’ on heaven’s door

"In Without Knocking" by Charles Marion Russell (c. 1909) / Creative Commons

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.