Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
What This Quote Teaches Us
There is a quiet kind of heartbreak in giving up on something before you have even touched it. You feel the weight of it in your chest, like a door you keep walking past but never quite open. That is the feeling these words are speaking to when you read: "The impossible is often the untried."
First comes: "The impossible is often the untried." On the surface, this says that many things you call impossible are simply things you have never actually attempted. You put them in a locked box in your mind and label them "not for me," even though your hands have never really reached for them. The deeper invitation here is unsettling but freeing: you are not always a reliable judge of what you can or cannot do. You use the word "impossible" to protect yourself from the fear of failure, embarrassment, or hard work, long before reality has had a chance to prove you wrong or right.
These words are not saying that nothing is truly impossible. They are hinting that "impossible" has become your shortcut word for "this scares me," "this is unfamiliar," or "I do not know how yet." So the phrase is gently pushing you to notice when you are treating a closed door as if it were a wall.
Imagine a simple, ordinary moment: you have been stuck in the same job for years, and every time someone says, "Have you thought about applying for that role?" you shake your head. You tell yourself, "I could never handle the pressure," "I am terrible at interviews," "People like me do not get those positions." You rehearse these phrases until they sound like facts. Yet your resume has never been sent, your voice has never spoken in that interview room, your skills have never been tested there. The "impossible" promotion is, so far, just "untried." In that quiet space before sleep, when the room is dim and your phone screen finally goes dark, you can feel the difference.
This quote also carries a kind of tough kindness. It does not flatter you. It suggests that sometimes you hide behind your own verdicts. That stings. I think this is one of the most uncomfortable truths about human ambition: you often decide the outcome before you take the first step, and then you call that protection wisdom.
There is also a more hopeful note tucked into these words. If what feels impossible is often just untouched, then possibility is wider than it appears from where you sit now. One attempt will not guarantee success, but one attempt shifts something: it gives you data, teaches you a skill, shows you who you are when you try. Your life becomes less about your guesses and more about your lived experience.
Still, these words are not absolute. Some things really are out of reach: a door that is locked by circumstance, a limitation of body, time, or resources that effort alone cannot overcome. Trying does not magically turn anything into "possible." Yet even here, the saying holds a piece of wisdom: when you have at least tried, you meet your limits honestly instead of worshipping the ghost of what you never dared to touch.
So the quote is not demanding that you succeed at everything. It is asking something smaller but more courageous: before you call it impossible, let your hands, your voice, your effort have a say.
The Era Of These Words
Jim Goodwin is not a widely documented historical figure, and the quote "The impossible is often the untried" circulates mostly in collections of motivational sayings and self-help material. Its popularity grew in an era when people were beginning to question fixed ideas about talent, class, and what kind of life you are "allowed" to have. These words fit naturally into a time of expanding opportunity but also growing anxiety about achievement.
Across the 20th century, especially after the world wars and into the later decades, many societies were wrestling with a new belief: that your future was not entirely dictated by where you were born or who your parents were. Education was opening up, new professions were emerging, and the idea of social mobility was becoming more realistic for more people. In that atmosphere, a phrase like this made emotional sense. It spoke to people who had grown used to assuming certain doors were permanently closed to them.
At the same time, work cultures were becoming more competitive. Self-help books, inspirational posters, and motivational talks gained traction as people searched for tools to handle both new pressures and new possibilities. A quote that challenged you to test your limits instead of assuming them would have felt both bracing and necessary. Whether or not Jim Goodwin was widely known, these words found a home in a world that was slowly learning to question the boundaries it had inherited.
About Jim Goodwin
Jim Goodwin, who was born in 1930 and died in 2004, lived through a period of dramatic social and cultural change that deeply shaped ideas about human potential and personal responsibility. Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War and reaching adulthood during the optimism and restlessness of the postwar years, he saw firsthand how quickly what once seemed impossible could become ordinary: new technologies, expanded civil rights, and shifting roles in work and family life.
Goodwin worked as a writer and speaker in the broad field of personal development, drawing on everyday struggles rather than grand theories. He was less a celebrity thinker and more a steady, practical voice, the kind of person whose phrases quietly spread through classrooms, offices, and worn-out paperbacks. His focus was on the moments when people surrendered to fear or habit before they had actually engaged with a challenge.
This is exactly the spirit behind "The impossible is often the untried." It reflects a worldview shaped by witnessing rapid changes in society: if nations could rebuild, if social norms could be rewritten, then perhaps an individual’s sense of "impossible" was also open to revision. Goodwin emphasized action over fantasy, and experiment over resignation. In his work, he returned often to the idea that courage is not the absence of doubt, but the willingness to move while doubt is still speaking. This quote captures that belief in a single, memorable turn of phrase.
