Can you ID and fix this quotation?

Factual Questions
1

I’m trying to find the original version, and the author, of this quotation. I can only paraphrase it:

“If we never push our limits, we’ll never discover how limitless we are.”

I’ve heard it worded a few different ways, and that it might be attributed to T.S. Eliot.

Anyone know for sure?

2

could be one of these.

This one looks promising :-

“Of course we all have our limits, but how can you possibly find your boundaries unless you explore as far and as wide as you possibly can? I would rather fail in an attempt at something new and uncharted than safely succeed in a repeat of something I have done”.–A. E. Hotchner

3

And of course there is the ever popular

generally attributed to that great old master A. Nonymous

4

Some of these are close, but not quite.

This is just a WAG, but might it be from a Star Trek: TNG episode, spoken by Captain Picard?

5

G’day

The way Arthur C. Clarke put it is “The only way to define your limits is to go beyond them”. I have also seen this written with ‘know’ and ‘discover’ in the place of ‘define’.

See:
<http://www.ultrarunners.info/>
<http://thejourneyinward.net/mind/thoughtshavepower.html>
<http://www.x-stream.co.uk/entertainment/scifi/interviews/arthur_c_clarke.html>
The way I remember first reading this was in Clarke’s ‘Profiles of the Future’ (1962), as “The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.”, but Google doesn’t show any hits on that way of putting it.

Regards,

6

G’day

Checking my copy of ‘Profiles of the Future’ (Arthur Clarke, 1962) I found this “But the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

The 1973 revised edition (ISBN 0 330 23619 9) has this footnote to that statement:

"*The French edition of this book rather surprised me by calling this Clarke’s Second Law (see p 32 for the first, which is now rather well known.) I accept the label, and have also formulated a Third: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiinguishable from magic.’

“As three laws were good enough for Newton, I have modestly decided to stop there.”

Regards,
Agback

7

It helps to spell ‘limits’ correctly.

“limits of the possible” “into the impossible” Arthur Clarke

produces 1,140 hits.

Regards,
Agback