Source: Utopia (1516), Ch. 1 : Discourses of Raphael Hythloday, of the Best State of a Commonwealth
Context: The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends. Its figure is not unlike a crescent. Between its horns the sea comes in eleven miles broad, and spreads itself into a great bay, which is environed with land to the compass of about five hundred miles, and is well secured from winds. In this bay there is no great current; the whole coast is, as it were, one continued harbour, which gives all that live in the island great convenience for mutual commerce. But the entry into the bay, occasioned by rocks on the one hand and shallows on the other, is very dangerous. In the middle of it there is one single rock which appears above water, and may, therefore, easily be avoided; and on the top of it there is a tower, in which a garrison is kept; the other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck.
Letter 130 (to the Queen of Navarre), 28 April, 1545.
“But physicians also cure more desperate maladies by harsh remedies, and a pilot, when he fears shipwreck, rescues by jettison whatever can be saved.”
Sed medici quoque graviores morbos asperis remediis curant, et gubernator, ubi nafraugium timet, iactura quidquid servari potest redimit.
V, 9, 3; translation by John Carew Rolfe
Historiarum Alexandri Magni Macedonis Libri Qui Supersunt, Book V
“If one tries to navigate unknown waters one runs the risk of shipwreck”
Death and the Dervish (Derviš i smrt), Part II, page. 329.
Death and the Dervish (1966)
"On Flying Saucers" in Is Anyone There? (1967), pp. 215–216
General sources
Take Me to the Pilot
Song lyrics, Elton John (1970)
Speech to the Women's National Liberal Association Conference, Memorial Hall, London (12 June 1901), quoted in The Times (13 June 1901), p. 12.
1900s
Journal entry (26 August 1938); later published in The Wartime Journals (1970)
Context: The readiness to blame a dead pilot for an accident is nauseating, but it has been the tendency ever since I can remember. What pilot has not been in positions where he was in danger and where perfect judgment would have advised against going? But when a man is caught in such a position he is judged only by his error and seldom given credit for the times he has extricated himself from worse situations. Worst of all, blame is heaped upon him by other pilots, all of whom have been in parallel situations themselves, but without being caught in them. If one took no chances, one would not fly at all. Safety lies in the judgment of the chances one takes. That judgment, in turn, must rest upon one's outlook on life. Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. Why should we look for his errors when a brave man dies? Unless we can learn from his experience, there is no need to look for weakness. Rather, we should admire the courage and spirit in his life. What kind of man would live where there is no daring? And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die?
“Love only enters as a native there,
For born in heav'n, it does but sojourn here.”
Canto III.
Of Divine Love (c. 1686)
Context: Could we forbear dispute, and practice love,
We should agree as angels do above.
Where love presides, not vice alone does find
No entrance there, hut virtues stay behind:
Both faith, and hope, and all the meaner train
Of mortal virtues, at the door remain.
Love only enters as a native there,
For born in heav'n, it does but sojourn here.
