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

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

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.

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

Jacques Cartier

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

Isabelle Eberhardt

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

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.

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.

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

I resolved to abandon trade and to fix my aim on something more praiseworthy and stable; whence it was that I made preparation for going to see part of the world and its wonders.

Amerigo Vespucci

Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into Australia; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.

Matthew Flinders

And when we saw all those cities and villages built in the water, and other great towns on dry land, and that straight and level causeway leading to Mexico, we were astounded...

Bernal Díaz del Castillo

While as he yet doth breath extend, no man is blest; behold the end.

William Alexander

It is a curious fact that camels walk more quickly and straighter to the sound of singing.

My mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living. She was a mother hen, and the other mountains were chicks under her wings.

On Everest

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

One thing I supplicate your majesty: that you will give orders, under a great penalty, that no bachelors of law should be allowed to come here [the New World]; for not only are they bad themselves, but they also make and contrive a thousand iniquities.

To Ferdinand V of Spain in 1513

Vasco Núñez de Balboa

We found shoal water, where we smelt so sweet and so strong a smell, as if we had been in the midst of some delicate garden abounding with all kinds of odoriferous flowers, by which we were assured that the land could not be far distant.

And beyond what has been said, experience, which is the mother of all things, undeceives us and removes all our doubts.

Duarte Pacheco Pereira

Though my father was a sirdar, he always carried loads. It is hard for someone who is walking unburdened to generate in others an enthusiasm for work.

Jamling Tenzing Norgay

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.

In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.

Reinhold Messner

[The Aztecs] said that by no means would they give themselves up, for as long as one of them was left he would die fighting, and that we would get nothing of theirs because they would burn everything or throw it into the water.

Hernán Cortés

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