“But we are not known for our ability to follow through on our unearned discoveries. We are top-of-the-water adventurers, who limit our opinions of the icebergs to what we can see.”

—  John Irving

A Trying to Save Piggy Sneed (1996)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "But we are not known for our ability to follow through on our unearned discoveries. We are top-of-the-water adventurers…" by John Irving?
John Irving photo
John Irving 97
American novelist and screenwriter 1942

Related quotes

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo

“Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest
Marcus Garvey photo

“God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own created genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.”

Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur
Stephen Harper photo

“In exercising our sovereignty over these waters, we are not only fulfilling our duty to the people who called this northern frontier home, and to the generations that will follow; we are also being faithful to all who came before us, who through great hardship and sacrifice made a quest for knowledge of the North.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Announcement of the John G. Diefenbaker icebreaker project, August 28, 2008.
2008

Margaret Cho photo

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. It is vital to mourn the victims of this government, but not at the expense of losing our sense of humor. Our ability to laugh directly coincides with our ability to fight. If we make fun of it, we can transcend it.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

Georg Brandes photo

“But what of the voice and judgment of conscience? The difficulty is that we have a conscience behind our conscience, an intellectual one behind the moral. … We can see quite well that our opinions of what is noble and good, our moral valuations, are powerful levers where action is concerned; but we must begin by refining these opinions and independently creating for ourselves new tables of values.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 25-26

Judy Blume photo

“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

Judy Blume Tiger Eyes

Source: Tiger Eyes

Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No. We are to hide it from ourselves. Our task is simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Hidden Righteousness, p. 158.

Charles Cooley photo

“As social beings we live with our eyes upon our reflection, but have no assurance of the tranquillity of the waters in which we see it.”

Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American sociologist

Charles Horton Cooley, in Structure and Agency in Everyday Life: An Introduction to Social Psychology http://books.google.co.in/books?id=KMLEnR1hoDQC&pg=PA53, (1 January 2003), p. 53

“The charm of our studies, the enchantment of science, is that, everywhere and always, we can give the justification of our principles and the proof of our discoveries.”

Mordechai Ben-Ari (1948) Israeli computer scientist

Source: Just a Theory: Exploring the Nature of Science (2005), Chapter 5, “Pseudoscience: What Some People Do Isn’t Science” (p. 98; quoting Louis Pasteur)

Barack Obama photo

“But we have to follow through, even when the politics are hard. Because in the eyes of innocent men and women and children who, through no fault of their own, have had to flee everything that they know, everything that they love, we have to have the empathy to see ourselves. We have to imagine what it would be like for our family, for our children, if the unspeakable happened to us. And we should all understand that, ultimately, our world will be more secure if we are prepared to help those in need and the nations who are carrying the largest burden with respect to accommodating these refugees.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, United Nations Address (September 2016)

Related topics