For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.
If we are uneducated, we shall not know how very old are all new ideas.
For poetry to be most effective, I believe it should be spoken aloud, embodied. After all, God didn’t think, “Let…
Never invoke the gods unless you really want them to appear. It annoys them very much.
I think this is actually Sir Raymond Priestly, Antarctic Explorer and Geologist.
See https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/s/rs/people/fst00000549
‘In his 1956 address to the British Association, Sir Raymond Priestley, one of his contemporaries, said “Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton”, paraphrasing what Apsley Cherry-Garrard had written in a preface to The Worst Journey in the World. ‘
Here is the passage that Sir Raymond Priestley was paraphrasing
“There are jobs for which, if I had to do them, I would like to serve under Scott, Amundsen, Shackleton and Wilson—each to his part. For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a Winter Journey, Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time. They will all go down in polar history as leaders, these men. ”
Apsley Cherry-Garrard in his introduction to “The Worst Journey in the World”
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14363