A Quote by Samuel Eliot Morison

America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

Samuel Eliot Morison

Quote Topics

Accidentally After America Around Discovered Done Else Exploration Fifty Getting Great History Hope Like Looking Man Most Named New New World Next Part Seaman Something Something Else Through Very Wanted World Years

Quote Author

Samuel Eliot Morison
American - Historian
July 9, 1887 - May 15, 1976

America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

Samuel Eliot Morison

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can't get credit for discovering a land already populated by indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.

Jon Stewart

When America has been discovered in America it will be discovered in Europe. They are looking for America now.

Gerald Stanley Lee

In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it.

Eduardo Galeano

Captain Cook discovered Australia looking for the Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus thought he was finding India but discovered America. History is full of events that happened because of an imaginary tale.

Umberto Eco

America was discovered by Amerigo Vespucci and was named after him, until people got tired of living in a place called "Vespuccia" and changed its name to "America"

Mike Harding

So Columbus said, somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it, And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it, And the fetters gave him welts, And they named America after somebody else.

Ogden Nash

In 1492, the natives discovered they were Indians; they discovered they lived in America.

Eduardo Galeano

Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coastand tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man's Land.

Henry David Thoreau

Cod is more responsible for the discovery of the New World than almost anything else. Drove the Vikings across the North Atlantic, and John Cabot discovered America by looking for cod.

Graydon Carter

When something is discovered by people in movie theaters, it's discovered by people who are all together, and there's a sort of feeling of an event about it. And when it's on video, it's like something is being discovered in the library or something. It's like having a second life in public libraries. It's just like individuals, and it's less of a... We can't participate in it the same way.

Wes Anderson

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an explorer. I wanted to go out into deep, dark jungle somewhere and find places in the world that hadn't been discovered. But then I discovered two things. One, that most of the world had already been visited and two, that would involve encountering entirely too many, very large spiders.

Rege-Jean Page

Underground people pay a desperate toll finding out things nobody else has discovered yet. We run around like headless chickens looking for the next cultural fix to spiral around in before it gets appropriated somewhere else and becomes something it never was. There's this sort of one-upmanship in the underground.

Irvine Welsh

When I discovered blues - I was 12-years-old - I didn't discover it in America where it was from; I discovered it from Fleetwood Mac - the original Peter Green Fleetwood Mac, Saveloy Brown - like British blues interpretations of it,' which then, when I started the liner notes and seeing all these names, I was like, 'Who's Willie Dixon?' Then I go to the record store and ask the guy there and he goes, 'Oh, you don't know anything.' And so, to me, that's the root of most of it anyway.

Paul Weller

We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.