
“Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.”
Source: The Wasted Vigil
These are paraphrases of Muir's quote from My First Summer in the Sierra (1911) - the actual quote is listed above: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." See Sierra Club explanation http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/misquotes.aspx.
Misattributed
Variant: Tug on anything at all and you'll find it connected to everything else in the universe.
Variant: When we tug at a single thing in nature, we find it attached to the rest of the world.
“Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.”
Source: The Wasted Vigil
Socrates, p. 128
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Variant: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II
Attributed to Albertus Magnus in: R.C. Bless (1996) Discovering the cosmos. p. 686.
Source: On Nietzsche (1945), p. xxviii
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
“When Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war.”
Act iv., Sc. 2.
The Rival Queens, or the Death of Alexander the Great (1677)