Top 702 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Explorers

Do just once what others say you can't do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.

Being brave isn't the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but finding a way through it.

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.

Fain would I climb, yet fear I to fall.

Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are dangerous.

The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.

Malacca is such a rest after the crowds of Japan and the noisy hurry of China! Its endless afternoon remains unbroken except by the dreamy, colored, slow-moving Malay life which passes below the hill. There is never any hurry or noise.

I am prepared to go anywhere, provided it be forward.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.

The people you surround yourself with influence your behaviors, so choose friends who have healthy habits.

All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

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.

The dog lives for the day, the hour, even the moment.

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

I do not think about being beautiful. What I devote most of my time to is being healthy.

Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.

Between 2 and 3 in the morning of the 19th inst. I was aroused by the cry that the enemy was upon us.

A static hero is a public liability. Progress grows out of motion.

A nomad I will remain for life, in love with distant and uncharted places.

Anyhow, a philosophical turn of thought now was not amiss, else one's patience would have given out almost at the harbour entrance. The term of her probation was eight days.

Now it is evident that a little insight into the customs of every people is necessary to insure a kindly communication; this, joined with patience and kindness, will seldom fail with the natives of the interior.

On the acquisition of Louisiana, in the year 1803, the attention of the government of the United States, was early directed towards exploring and improving the new territory.

I demolish my bridges behind me - then there is no choice but forward.

The ocean is like a checking account where everybody withdraws but nobody makes a deposit. This is what's happening because of overfishing.

I have not told half of what I saw.

The longer we were in it, the smaller it seemed to get.

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things.

The sky lovingly smiles on the earth and her children.

This ship was a league from us, and some of the men would have taken her, and I would not consent to it, and this Moore said I always hindered them making their fortunes. Was that not the reason I struck him? Was there a mutiny on board?

Faith is a continuation of reason.

We must always remember with gratitude and admiration the first sailors who steered their vessels through storms and mists, and increased our knowledge of the lands of ice in the South.

As a rule, anything that is pretty you avoid when on an expedition in the polar extremes. Normally anything other than white means a hazard such as a crevasse.

Clean water, the essence of life and a birthright for everyone, must become available to all people now.

I wanted something different; I wanted something that challenged me and that pushed me further. Then this idea of climbing Mount Everest came to my mind. It stuck in my head for days. Someone told me I couldn't do it, and that really annoyed me.

An hour or two spent in writing from dictation, another hour or two in reading aloud, a little geography and a little history and a little physics made the day pass busily.

The 6th of August in the morning we saw an opening in the land and we ran into it, and anchored in 7 and a half fathom water, 2 miles from the shore, clean sand.

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.

If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame.

The Inhabitants of Carolina, thro' the Richness of the Soil, live an easy and pleasant Life.

I believe that when an elder dies, a library is burned: vast sums of wisdom and knowledge are lost. Throughout the world libraries are ablaze with scant attention.

I don't think of myself as an explorer but as an athlete.

What is paradise, but, a garden, an orchard of trees and herbs, full of pleasure and nothing there but delights.

Caves are whimsical things, and geology on a local scale is random and unpredictable.

In the islands of the Aegean Sea, every island is full of graves.

Long after this wonderful event in the Earth's history, when the human species was spread over a good deal of Asia, Europe, and Africa, migration to the American continents began in attempts to find new feeding grounds and unoccupied areas for hunting and fishing.

The time to prepare for your next expedition is when you have just returned from a successful trip.

This land may be profitable to those that will adventure it.

Traveling - it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.

In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds.

A British declaration be taken against Martinez for 'capturing and robbing us.

They might in the future more than ever before engage in hunting beavers.

It'll work, if God, wind, leads, ice, snow, and all the hells of this damned frozen land are willing.

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

It was very clear that this was a very, very old site. There were remains of sod walls. Fishermen assumed it was an old Indian site. Bu Indians didn't use that kind of buildings and houses.

Faith dare the soul to go further than it can see.

I am not afraid of the darkness. Real death is preferable to a life without living.

The sea is dangerous and its storms terrible, but these obstacles have never been sufficient reason to remain ashore...unlike the mediocre, intrepid spirits seek victory over those things that seem impossible...it is with an iron will that they embark on the most daring of all endeavors...to meet the shadowy future without fear and conquer the unknown.

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