Exploration Quotes

The Exploration Mindset

This page provides quotes which speaks to the nature and highest ideals of exploration and being an explorer. Original idea conceived by Mynxee for the old r/evescout subreddit.

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“We have to establish our credentials as an explorocracy; so to survive and rule ourselves, we have to explore.” --China Miéville, Embassytown

"Not all those who wander are lost.” --JRR Tolkien

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." --T. S. Eliot

"Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit." --Frank Borman

"I'm a storyteller; that's what exploration really is all about. Going to places where others haven't been and returning to tell a story they haven't heard before." --James Cameron

"Exploration by real people inspires us." --Stephen Hawking

"For me, exploration is about that journey to the interior, into your own heart. I'm always wondering, how will I act at my moment of truth? Will I rise up and do what's right, even if every fiber of my being is telling me otherwise?" --Ann Bancroft

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” --André Gide

“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.” --Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

“The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief sedentary hiatus, we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds throughout the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will love it no less for its obscurity and fragility. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross before we found our way.” --Carl Sagan

“Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else - above all, a travel bureau - arrange everything before-hand?” --Richard Aldington, Death of a Hero

“If you do something that has never been done you will collect treasures that have never been found.” --Jenna Newton

"I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list." --Susan Sontag

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” --Mark Twain

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” --Lao Tzu

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” --John A. Shedd