Translation of "Gegen windmühlen kämpfen" in English

You know, even Don Quixote had to stop tilting at those windmills.

If you two wanna go tilting at windmills, be my guests.

What does it really mean to fight windmills?

It would be better to bring these companies to heel rather than continue tilting at windmills.

Fights windmills, saves fuckin' damsels, all in search of greater purpose.

Well, like Don Quixote, we could of course charge forth and fight windmills.

We did not try fighting windmills in the Dutch parliament, as Doeke Eisma knows, and I do not fancy trying that here because I know where it would lead.

However, we would not be contemplating such an emasculation of draft legislation if Mr Barroso and his Commissioners had defended their draft directive instead of tilting at windmills.

In my political life I have not been afraid to take on impossible causes and tilt at windmills and run into brick walls, but I think that if we did attempt some kind of harmonisation of this area, what we would end up with, if anything, would be the most illiberal piece of legislation ever to go through any House anywhere in the world, because it is not possible.

Despite the fact that these high-level reports are greeted with much appreciation year on year, we in the European institutions sometimes feel as if we are tilting at windmills, since the findings of the reports encounter resistance on the part of the Council, with the result that the Commission has not been able to put the necessary measures in place for years.

Too much focus on broad issues, such as rule of law and accountability, runs the risk that policymakers will end up tilting at windmills while overlooking the particular governance challenges most closely linked to economic growth.

What is needed is to analyse these respectable arguments, and not, like Don Quixote, to tilt at windmills.

The situation may be Compared to the epic figure of Don Quixote, who Considered hero himself while fighting against the windmills.

And somehow things work better when you have fun doing them and not constantly have to tilt at windmills.

But we are convinced that we resemble neither Sisyphus nor Don Quixote fighting against the windmills.

There's no reason you can't find an intermediate solution so that you can still achieve a goal with satisfaction – even greater satisfaction than you'd experience if you were to continue battling windmills and ending up exhausted and drained to such an extent that you weren't able to achieve anything at all.

In his captivating and inspiring way, Gerd Berghofer made the poor knight´s pitiful attempts to fight against the windmills such a vivid experience that the audience was torn between pitying Don Quijote and being amused by his deeds.

Today, his children fight against the empty promises of the politicians.

You hear it, for example, in a passage from Gomorrah, which I want to quote here because it can also be understood as a sort of credo, as a description of what keeps Roberto Saviano tilting at windmills:

Be sure to check out our range of cheap apartments, hostels and hotels (but sadly no windmills) in Madrid, close to Plaza España.

I know I'm fighting against windmills.

At times, I questioned it myself, wondering if I was chasing windmills, trying to solve some unsolvable puzzle.