The Brian Bigelow Report: It’s a nice phrase, however, the earliest evidence of this quote being a Chinese Proverb was made in 1962 by a magazine that included a “words of wisdom” section, and precluded every one of them with “Confucius say:” regardless of whether the phrase came from Confucius or not. Pre-1962 the phrase was known as early as 1902, but none of those uses were attributed to Confucius. In short, this is unlikely to be a Chinese proverb; still a nice phrase though.
On a related note, there’s also a nice poem with a similar theme published in 1917 by Edgar Albert Guest titled ‘It Couldn’t Be Done’ (posted below)
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,
But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat, and he took off his hat,
And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure;
There are thousands to point out to you, one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start to sing as you tackle the thing
That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.