“Man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible.”Max Weber · Politica, o vocație · 1919 · Politica, o vocație, paragraful despre etica convingerii
The frontier of the possible moves only when someone aims beyond it, even if they fail.
Weber explains a paradox of innovation: what seems impossible at first becomes normal later, precisely because someone insisted on it. The mechanism is that perceived limits are often conventions, not laws of nature; the failed attempt still moves the frontier and reveals what is genuinely feasible. Heavier-than-air flight looked absurd until the Wright brothers tried; universal suffrage looked utopian until it became standard.
Weber adds a detail easy to overlook: those who reach for the impossible pay the price of trying themselves. Society reaps the rewards, but only they take the risk. That is why a community that mocks every failure ends up with no pioneers. Think of a colleague who proposes a new procedure in a meeting and is stopped with "that's how it's always been done". If they risk and fail, everyone learns where the real limit lies. If they never risk, the limit stays invisible. The next question: what kind of environment makes such attempts possible?
Why it matters It encourages anyone with a project that seems too big: failing toward the impossible is often the road to a new possible.