An Essay upon Projects Quotes

“Necessity, which is allowed to be the mother of invention, has so violently agitated the wits of men at this time that it seems not at all improper, by way of distinction, to call it the Projecting Age.”
― Daniel Defoe, An Essay upon Projects

“Nothing’s so partial as the laws of fate,
Erecting blockheads to suppress the great.
Sir Francis Drake the Spanish plate-fleet won;
He had been a pirate if he had got none.
Sir Walter Raleigh strove, but missed the plate,
And therefore died a traitor to the State.
Endeavour bears a value more or less,
Just as ’tis recommended by success:
The lucky coxcomb ev’ry man will prize,
And prosp’rous actions always pass for wise.”
― Daniel Defoe, An Essay upon Projects

“The building of Babel was a right project; for indeed the true definition of a project, according to modern acceptation, is [...]a vast undertaking, too big to be managed, and therefore likely enough to come to nothing. And yet, as great as they are, it is certainly true of them all, even as the projectors propose: that, according to the old tale, if so many eggs are hatched, there will be so many chickens, and those chickens may lay so many eggs more, and those eggs produce so many chickens more, and so on. Thus it was most certainly true that if the people of the Old World could have built a house up to heaven, they should never be drowned again on earth, and they only had forgot to measure the height; that is, as in other projects, it only miscarried, or else it would have succeeded.”
― Daniel Defoe, An Essay upon Projects