“Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.”
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author
The New York Times (3 December 1978)
“They were or they weren't.
On an island or not.
An ocean or not an ocean
Swallowed them up or it didn't.”
"Atlantis"
Poems New and Collected (1998), Calling Out to Yeti (1957)
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Do you have more details about the quote "They were or they weren't.
On an island or not.
An ocean or not an ocean
Swallowed them up or it didn't." by Wisława Szymborska?
Wisława Szymborska92
Polish writer 1923–2012Related quotes
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D.H. Robertson, quotes in: Ronald Coase (1937) "The Nature of the Firm". Economica 4.16 (1937): 386.
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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.”
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Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 152
William H. Seward (1801–1872) American lawyer and politician
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?
Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship
Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …
Interview (March 1996)
Bruno Latour (1947) French sociologist, philosopher and anthropologist
Source: Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory