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Quotes of the Day for 3 August 2004 - Digging

The Panama Canal was completed and working on this day in 1914, the official opening with the first paying customer took place on the 15th. The idea of digging this huge ditch had first been raised by the Spanish in about 1524. The French started digging in 1880 but failed to overcome a number of problems. The US team started in 1904. The numbers are staggering: the canal is 51 miles long, cost $352 million, employed 80,000 during construction and killed several thousand of them. It just goes to show you can change the world if you roll up your sleeves and start digging.

Not houses finely roofed or the stones of walls well builded, nay nor canals and dockyards make the city, but men able to use their opportunity.
     - Alcaeus, 611 - 580 BC

When solving problems, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves.
     - Anthony J. D'Angelo

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.
     - Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967

The crowning fortune of a man is to be born to some pursuit which finds him employment and happiness, whether it be to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, or statues, or songs.
     - Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803 - 1882

He that embarks in the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many founder in their passage, while they lie waiting for the gale.
     - Dr Samuel Johnson, 1709 - 1784

Millions must plough and forge and dig in order that a few thousand may write and paint and study.
     - Heinrich Gotthard von Treitschke, 1834 - 1896

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