Quotes About Navigation

The written word is redundant on the high seas. Why? Because paper gets wet too easily.

I had dispensed with a rudder on the principal that fate must be given a chance.

The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul.

He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

I would set my course that instant not for the nearest but the farthest star.

We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain—not because the boat won't respond, and not because we can't find our destination, but because the future is fundamentally different than it appears through the prospectiscope. Just

Chickens have an uncanny sense of direction.

We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land—nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. That chart is the Constitution.

If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of a glorious haven.

Sebbene lo Stato si ostini a dare un nome alle strade, la gente stabilisce i propri punti di riferimento in maniera del tutto autonoma. Una chiesa, una casa abbandonata, un parco, un edificio pubblico, uno stadio, un cimitero: qualunque cosa può andare bene. Ognuno insomma finisce per inventarsi una sua personale mappa urbana.

He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

One degree of longitude equals four minutes of time the world over, but in terms of distance, one degree shrinks from sixty-eight miles at the Equator to virtually nothing at the poles.

With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

In the wake of the Longitude Act, the concept of "discovering the longitude" became a synonym for attempting the impossible.

The zero-degree parallel of latitude is fixed by the laws of nature, while the zero-degree meridian of longitude shifts like the sands of time. This difference makes finding latitude child's play, and turns the determination of longitude, especially at sea, into an adult dilemma—one that stumped the wisest minds of the world for the better part of human history.

To learn one's longitude at sea, one needs to know what time it is aboard ship and also the time at the home port or another place of known longitude—at that very same moment. The two clock times enable the navigator to convert the hour difference into a geographical separation. Since the Earth takes twenty-four hours to complete one full revolution of three hundred sixty degrees, one hour marks one twenty-fourth of a spin, or fifteen degrees.

Having established itself securely on shipboard, the chronometer was soon taken for granted, like any other essential thing, and the whole question of its contentious history, along with the name of its original inventor, dropped from the consciousness of the seamen who used it every day.

The British Parliament, in its famed Longitude Act of 1714, set the highest bounty of all, naming a prize equal to a king's ransom (several million dollars in today's currency) for a "Practicable and Useful" means of determining longitude.

He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

John "Longitude" Harrison was born March 24, 1693, in the county of Yorkshire, the eldest of five children.

It is a well-documented fact that guys will not ask for directions. This is a biological thing. This is why it takes several million sperm cells... to locate a female egg, despite the fact that the egg is, relative to them, the size of Wisconsin.

It's like we're mice in a maze

We just need to get through it. Walk fast, but don't look like you know where you're going. We can't afford to carry anything—empty your arms and pockets or we might get attacked. We'll just have to hope we can find things in the Lincoln Building.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.