
“Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.”
The New York Times (3 December 1978)
"Atlantis"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)
“Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.”
The New York Times (3 December 1978)
“Yeah, I said, swallowing and looking out my open door, at the ocean. The answer's yes.”
What Happened To Goodbye (2011)
“This island isn't big enough for both of us…so who will swim in eel-infested oceans?”
Lyrics, A Crow Left of the Murder... (2004)
D.H. Robertson, quotes in: Ronald Coase (1937) "The Nature of the Firm". Economica 4.16 (1937): 386.
“Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel?”
Source: The Old Man and the Sea
“They kept it up until the very end. Only the engulfing ocean had power to drown them into silence.”
Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 152
Commerce in the Pacific Ocean (1852)
Context: Who does not see, then, that every year hereafter, European commerce, European politics, European thoughts, and European activity, although actually gaining greater force and European connections, although actually becoming more intimate will nevertheless relatively sink in importance; while the Pacific Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond, will become the chief theatre of events in the World's great Hereafter? Who does not see that this movement must effect our own complete emancipation from what remains of European influence and prejudice, and in turn develop the American opinion and influence which shall remould constitutions, laws, and customs, in the land that is first greeted by the rising sun?
Interview (March 1996)
Source: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory