No, it’s just the effect pf the ears. 
If you try to do something, that means you intend to succeed. If you don’t intend to succeed, that is called “not trying”. Yoda is just a stupid muppet.
I think Yoda makes sense here if you take his words in a limitted context. Obviously, people can try to do things and fail because of a lack of ability. But I don’t think that is what Yoda meant. It’s a line from a family movie, so I think it is more about human weakness and excuses.
Have you ever heard a kid say something like “I’ll try not to punch my little brother anymore” or “I’ll try to take a break from watching TV and do my homework”. In both cases, it is pretty much bullshit - the kid has control over his or her behaviour. Even adults say this kind of thing, with “I’ll try to stay sober” or “I’ll try to stay sober” type of crap. In most cases, the person concerned has full control over their behaviour. They can choose what to do.
There is only “do” and “do not do”.
Actually, you hit the very reason I posted this OP. My daughter keeps insisting she’ll try to behave better, or this or that. It’s an excuse, plain and simple… we all no full-well she can do better. So, there is no try in this case.
From there, I was wondering if this applies across the board.
Well, there are two kinds of activities where trying it relevent - where the outcome is purely a matter of will, and where it ain’t. For example: make this deadline. If I don’t do it, it’s not necessarily a result of weakness or rebellion; other factors may be at play, making “try and fail” a not-necessarily-absurd outcome.
On the other hand, there’s “I’m not gonna buy those cookies”. Yeah. If you fail, obviously you had a lapse in trying at some point.
I can see it both ways.
Suppose you have an important assignment at work, and it’s very important that you get it done by a certain deadline. (If you want an example, imagine you have to make a delivery of medicine to a hospital ward full of sick kids who will die without it.) Do you do it, or do you try to do it, by the deadline? If it’s important enough, your boss isn’t going to want to hear “I’ll try”; he’s going to want to hear “I’ll do it.”
Now, nothing in life is certain. You could get a heart attack and keel over in the next five minutes. You could get run over by a bus and end up in a full body cast. Some nut with WMDs could blow up the world. No matter how careful you are, there’s no guarantee against something happening that would prevent you from getting the job done. So in this sense, there is no do—there is only try.
But there’s a lot you can do to minimize your chances of failure. You can start out early; you can avoid distractions; you can make sure you have more than enough ahead of time for everything you might need; you can be extra careful; you can focus firmly on the job and not rest until it’s completed. There’s a big practical difference between an attitude of “I’ll try to get it done on time” and “I will get it done on time.” The former could mean just about anything. The latter, if you’re being honest, means that you’ll do whatever you reasonably can to make sure it gets done on time.
Ugh, I can’t believe I actually spelled “know” as “no”. I try so hard to be a good speller, too.
Agreed, Thudlow.
Read a passage in a Kazantzakis book in which a guy dreams he is meeting his dead father in a long mountain cavern, and his father in death has become something like a god (paraphrasing a lot here). Booming voice through the caves and the whole nine.
“What should I do?” asks the man in the dream.
“Do what you can”, responds the father.
“But that isn’t enough”, replies the man.
“Then do what you cannot!”
If you dream the impossible dream, ‘success’ is more a matter of progress than a finish line.
No, it’s a stupid line. Much in the same way that you cannot be drunk without drinking, you cannot do without trying. Stupid line made all the stupider because if there was one piece of advice, Luke really didn’t need it was to jump right into things. In fact, after giving hem this craptacular piece of advice, Yoda spends the rest of the film trying to make him stop doing at the drop of a hat.
Yoda was just tired of Luke’s whining.
Yoda’s “do” is “try and succeed”. You can also have a “do” that is just the action independent of the outcome in which case it is just the “try” part.
If you’re being honest, you never will say “do” in this situation, because to make that prediction with certainty you need reliable precognition. “Do” when you can’t control for extraneous factors is something you say to make yourself sound better to others (and possibly yourself). Saying “try” doesn’t in any way imply that you’ll try less hard; it just means that you’re admitting you’re not a god.
And yes, I am this pedantic in real life, constant adding qualifications to my statements to make them as technically correct as possible. Well, I am most of the time anyway.
“Do or Do not: There is no Try…”
From the prequels:
“Only Sith deal in absolutes”
Which in itself, is an absolute.
If at first you don’t succeed, do-do again?
[sub]heh-heh… do-do…[/sub]
If you go bringing the prequels into this, somebody’s going to mention the romantic qualities of sand, and then this whole thread is going to go completely to peices.
oh crap it just happened
On my shift at work we don’t have any maintenance. Things break. Usually I try to fix those things so that a particular machine isn’t down, even though thats beyond the scope of my job description. Sometimes I figure it out, sometimes I don’t.
All yoda is saying is that if you go into a job with an attitude of pessimism and doubt, you’re more likely give up, and subsequently fail, before a solution is found.
‘I can do it!’ vs ‘Uh… I’ll go through the motions to placate you, but this is still impossible.’
As a temp office worker, I try to do stuff all the time - I’m a good temp because I know when to try to do something, and when to go ask somebody.
One of my real life favorite wise elders was Mississippi bluesman Othar Turner, who lived a long life in relative poverty, and one of the sharpest men I’ve have the priviledge to know.
One quote that’s stuck strong with me in all the wisdom passed on in talks with him:
“You know, a Fail ain’t nothing but a try, fail ain’t nothin’ but a try.”
He was talking specifically about learning to play the fife, and, as I recall, it was something his teacher said to him. It’s valuable in that it means ya got to practice, hell, the greater part of life is practice— and not to get messed up by thinking because you couldn’t do something the first time you should give it up. That’s the common immature response, but to do anything well takes practice and encouragement: “Fail ain’t nothin’ but a try” is that sweet encouragement.
He lived it: Othar teaching his granddaughter Shardee to play and Othar, with fife, a real guy on this planet who was a true Griot, wise elder, teacher, and not one for trifling.
Inspirational no-nonsense Yoda: “Do or do not - there is no try.”
Discouraging downbeat Yoda: [after Luke says he’s not afraid] “You will be.”
Geez, Yoda… show some consistency, you must.