This saying appears to be due to John Augustus Shedd; it was quoted in "Grace Hopper : The Youthful Teacher of Us All" by Henry S. Tropp in Abacus Vol. 2, Issue 1 (Fall 1984) ISSN 0724-6722 . She did repeat this saying on multiple occasions, but she called it "a motto that has stuck with me" and did not claim coinage. Additional variations and citations may be found at Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/09/safe-harbor/
Misattributed
“Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.”
Source: The Bell
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Iris Murdoch 61
British writer and philosopher 1919–1999Related quotes
Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 287
Letter to the Naval Committee of Congress http://www.rulit.me/books/the-last-ship-read-334944-1.html (14 September 1775)
"The Fall" (1975), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)
Letter to Josiah Burchett (1721), quoted in Longitude (1995) by Dava Sobel, p. 60
Board of Longitude
“If it's sent by ship then it's a cargo, if it's sent by road then it's a shipment.”
Compilation by the BBC 11 March, 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4340205.stm
[Earle, Sylvia, BREAKING: Dr. Sylvia Earle Boldly Addresses the UN To Urge Legal Protection for High Seas, http://mission-blue.org/2015/01/breaking-dr-sylvia-earle-boldly-addresses-the-un-to-urge-legal-protection-for-high-seas/, www.missionblue.org, Mission Blue, 28 January 2015]
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Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One (The Call) (1924)