In the North-East of England we have the saying:
Shy bairns get nowt
With a less-slang equivalent of:
Shy children get no sweets.
It's kind of like "Nothing ventured, nothing gained".
Is there an equivalent saying in American English?
In the North-East of England we have the saying:
Shy bairns get nowt
With a less-slang equivalent of:
Shy children get no sweets.
It's kind of like "Nothing ventured, nothing gained".
Is there an equivalent saying in American English?
"The squeaky wheel gets the oil," because squeaky wheels are like children who are not shy. They make too much noise.
Similar: Fortune favors the bold.
The most common that I hear on the west coast, by far, is “No pain, no gain”. I do commonly hear “Nothing ventured nothing gained”, but that’s usually by people over ~20 years old.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard “Shy kids get no sweets”, but I don’t think that phrasing would be well received here. Some might even consider it offensive (rare, but something to note).
Oxford's A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), which relies on oral rather than written sources, has these variants under the heading ask:
ask 1. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. Vars.: (a) Ask and have. (b) Ask and learn. (c) Ask and you'll find out. (d) By asking one learns. (e) Them as asks, gits; them as don't ask, don't git.
The part of the main proverb about the door opening and (especially) variant (e) above seem pretty strongly on point here.
From the same source (recorded in Ontario):
He who begs timidly, courts refusal.
Yet another observation on the disadvantages of shyness—or lack of confidence—occurs in this proverb (recorded in California, Louisiana, and New York and reported in the same dictionary):
He who is afraid of doing too much always does too little.
You could simply go with something along the lines of
He Who Dares Wins
You could also go for the internationally recognised.
Those that don't ask don't get.