That's a hard, cruel thing for me to say, and I hate to say it,--but we've just got to realize the position we're in.

It's best that we should look at it from the worst possible angle.

I do not speak jestingly when I say that we may as well consider ourselves dead and forgotten.

I am as full of hope and confidence as anybody and I am an optimist if there ever was one, but I don't work on the theory that God takes any better care of an optimist than He does of a pessimist.
"It will require months, maybe years, for us to construct a ship, and even then it will not be big enough to transport all of us.

The most we can hope for is a craft that will be stout enough to go out and bring help to the rest of us.