Thor Heyerdahl Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

Arranging the journey was so difficult. Getting home again was much easier.

Thor Heyerdahl
Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.

Thor Heyerdahl
Land! An island! We devoured it greedily with our eyes and woke the others, who tumbled out drowsily and stared in all directions as if they thought our bow was about to run on to a beach. Screaming seabirds formed a bridge across the sky in the direction of the distant island, which stood out sharper against the horizon as the red background widened and turned gold with the approach of the sun and the full daylight.

Thor Heyerdahl
Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? I guarantee nothing but a free trip to Peru and the South Sea islands and back, but you will find good use for your technical abilities on the voyage. Reply at once.' Next day the following telegram arrived from Torstein: COMING. TORSTEIN.

Thor Heyerdahl
Sea and soil, fumes and sewage, are all here to ride with us forever, in some form or another, on the thin crust of our spinning sphere.

Thor Heyerdahl
Bear in mind that the ocean currents circulate with no regard for political borderlines, and that nations can divide the land, but the revolving ocean, indispensable and yet vulnerable, will forever remain a common human heritage.

Thor Heyerdahl
If man is to survive, the ocean is not dispensable.

Thor Heyerdahl
Some looked like fringed, fluttering spooks cut out of cellophane paper, while others resembled red-beaked birds with hard shells instead of feathers. There was no end to Nature's extravagant inventions in the plankton world.

Thor Heyerdahl
Man harvest the sea as he harvests the land; let us therefore not fool ourselves by relying on the depth of the ocean, anymore than we rely on the depth of the land.

Thor Heyerdahl