Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote, myster resolu

'If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.'

There is only one problem with this quote, stirring as it is and popular in business self-help books and others. It's very hard to source, which is a great pity.

Hunting around on the internet it seems:

It did appear (if one believes the discussion on Wikiquotes)in an American translation of his book Citadelle.

However in the published versions of Citadelle, the nearest appears to be this:

Et par contre, si je communique à mes hommes l’amour de la marche sur la mer, et que chacun d’eux soit ainsi en pente à cause d’un poids dans le cœur, alors tu les verras bientôt se diversifier selon leurs mille qualités particulières. Celui-là tissera des toiles, l’autre dans la forêt par l’éclair de sa hache couchera l’arbre. L’autre, encore, forgera des clous, et il en sera quelque part qui observeront les étoiles afin d’apprendre à gouverner. Et tous cependant ne seront qu’un. Créer le navire ce n’est point tisser les toiles, forger les clous, lire les astres, mais bien donner le goût de la mer qui est un, et à la lumière duquel il n’est plus rien qui soit contradictoire mais communauté dans l’amour.

Which overtaxes my French but seems to be about people with various gifts (chopping down trees, forging nails, navigating by the stars?). Give them a taste of the sea (donner le goût de la mer?) and, vaguely, they'll be a community of love, not people pulling in contradictory directions. Or something.

The source for this is here. Google translate doesn't help: I tried.

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