Explorer Quotes

Christopher Columbus

Marco Polo

James Cook

Roald Amundsen

Fridtjof Nansen

Hernán Cortés

Ernest Shackleton

We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!

Humphrey Gilbert

I used all diligence to arrive at London and therefore I now gave my crew a certificate under my hand, of my free and willing return, without persuasion or force by any one or more of them.

Gold is the most precious of all commodities; gold constitutes treasure, and he who possesses it has all he needs in the world, as also the means of rescuing souls from purgatory, and restoring them to the enjoyment of paradise.

Christopher Columbus

If you put together all the Christians in the world, with their Emperors and their Kings, the whole of these Christians, - aye, and throw in the Saracens to boot, - would not have such power, or be able to do so much as this Kublai, who is Lord of all the Tartars in the world.

I was in Deadwood at the time and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting and found that my friend had been killed by McCall.

I am rather inclined to believe that this is the land God gave to Cain.

Jacques Cartier

So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.

Christopher McCandless

One must never look for happiness. One meets it by the way — but it is always going in the opposite direction.

Isabelle Eberhardt

I fear we have shot our bolt - but we have been to Pole and done the longest journey on record.

Robert Falcon Scott

I think I'm the first man to sit on top of the world.

Sweet flower of the golden horn, Thy beauty passeth praise! But why should spring thy gold adorn Most meet for summer days?

Henry Hurd Rusby

Remember, the greater the opportunity, the fewer are those who see it.

The limits of the unknown had to recede step by step before the ever-increasing yearning after light and knowledge of the human mind.

Fridtjof Nansen

The Eskimo, Ootah, had his own explanation. Said he: "The devil is asleep or having trouble with his wife, or we should never have come back so easily."

They taught me that all life forms are important to each other in our common quest for happiness and survival. That there is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind.

Lawrence Anthony

The world is apt to judge of everything by the success; and whoever has ill fortune will hardly be allowed a good name.

William Dampier

Few mountains have such a superb array of ridges and faces.

No person who has not spent a period of his life in those 'stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole' will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man

Ernest Shackleton

A heavy fog this morning prevented our setting out before seven o'clock. At nine I took two men and walked on the L.S. I crossed three beautiful streams of running water heading into the prairies. On those streams the land very fine, covered with pea vine and rich weed.

There is scarce a cave, an isolated rock, a lone pine tree or a pile of stones without supporting folklore.

The expedition had now performed its functions. I saw that old father Nile without any doubt rises in the Victoria Nyanza, and as I had foretold, that lake is the great source of the holy river which cradled the first expounder of our religious belief.

John Hanning Speke

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a yeti.

There's a passage about 'rivers of molten rock that wound their way... until they cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth.' That's a perfect description: how did Tolkien know, a quarter century before anyone ever saw a picture of Io? Talk about Nature imitating Art.

Arthur C. Clarke

Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L. E. G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard to try and save his comrades, beset by hardships.

First of all, a scientist must be endowed with an imagination, for imagination plays no less important a part in science than it does in art. Imagination is as necessary as is painstaking work on collected material. Without imagination scientific work is just an assortment of facts and conclusions — empty, chaotic, and often barren.

Alexander Fersman