A Quote by Claude A. Swanson

When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats. — © Claude A. Swanson
When the water reaches the upper level, follow the rats.
Ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and thenthere is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks.
There is this idea of 'north,' and if you're from Michigan and you wandered the Upper Peninsula, you know what it feels like. The sky has a particular vibe, a coldness, stretching into the upper reaches of Canada.
For the Persian poet Rumi, each human life is analogous to a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it moves along, it is slowly filling with the water around it. That's a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge. When the water in the bowl finally reaches the same level as the water outside, there is no longer any need for the container, and it drops away as the inner water merges with the outside water. We call this the moment of death. That analogy returns to me over and over as a metaphor for ourselves.
The water bath has a platform which the rats learn to find because they don't like to get wet. Then you remove the platform. But you don't tell the rats.
I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping. I don't like to go into subways, because I always see them. Rats are like my naguales [kindred animal spirits]. They follow me.
It is easier to study the 'behavior' of rats than people, because rats are smaller and have fewer outside commitments. So modern psychology is mostly about rats
Yes, the upper reaches of society are still dominated by men.
Can the water in the valleys ever stop and rest? When the water finally reaches the sea, it becomes great waves.
This upper limit, of earth at our feet is visible and touches the air, but below it reaches to infinity
Why are scientists now using lawyers in laboratory experiments instead of rats? Three reasons: (1) lawyers are more plentiful than rats, (2) there is no danger the scientists will become attached to the lawyers, and (3) there are some things rats just won't do.
People tend to care about dogs because they generally have more experience with dogs as companions; but other animals are as capable of suffering as dogs are. Few people feel sympathy for rats. Yet rats are intelligent animals, and there can be no doubt that rats are capable of suffering and do suffer from countless painful experiments performed on them. If the army were to stop experiments on dogs and switch to rats instead, we should not be any less concerned.
[Concerning the Water Ouzel, now called American Dipper:] In a general way his music is that of the streams refined and spiritualized. The deep booming notes of the falls are in it, the trills of rapids, the gurgling of margin eddies, the low whispering of level reaches, and the sweet tinkle of separate drops oozing from the ends of mosses and falling into tranquil pools.
The major difference between rats and people is that rats learn from experience.
Enthusiasm reaches out with joy, for there is nothing depressing about it; it reaches out in faith, for there is no fear in it; it reaches out with acceptance, for there is no doubt in it; it reaches out as a child for there is no uncertainty about it.
If we are to be the last of the White men who conquered the world; if we are finally to be overwhelmed by a pack of rats, let us at least face the death of our race as our ancestors faced their death - like man. Let us not crawl down amongst the rats begging for mercy or trying to out-sneak them and pretend to be rats ourselves!
Whenever I'm near a body of water, I love to rent a kayak. It's easy to use, and you not only get a cardio workout but also do a vigorous upper-body workout, pushing and pulling your paddle through the water.
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