After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore, and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

I’m one of the most adaptable guys I know in as much as travelling is my favourite thing to do in life. With every place I go, I try to stay there long enough to do it justice, long enough so that I can at least imagine what it would be like to live there. Once I imagine that, then it’s OK for me to return home.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

What I enjoy most is doing something I’ve never done before.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally – but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.

An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.

The Ignis Fatuus is a vapor shining without heat.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

My friends tease me about the fact that if someone seems bad or shady or like they have a secret, I find them incredibly interesting.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

I didn’t want to be a fashion designer, and for a good half of my career I didn’t like it. I always wanted to do other things.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.

Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves – and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either.

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

Today, we’re still loaded down – and, to some extent, embarrassed – by ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

Going to Southeast Asia for the first time and tasting that spectrum of flavors – that certainly changed my whole palate, the kind of foods I crave. A lot of the dishes I used to love became boring to me.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

Where there is an observatory and a telescope, we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once.

I love trying new things.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

I’ve always been a bit of a gypsy.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

Exploration by real people inspires us.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

I’m fascinated by musicians who don’t completely understand their territory; that’s when you do your best work.

I found that part of it towards San Salvador extending from north to south five leagues, and the other side which we coasted along, ran from east to west more than ten leagues.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.

A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.

Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.

I’ve been here before and will come again, but I’m not going this trip through.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.

The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.

I think the discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known particles would revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

What I’m trying to do is, is to make a significant difference in space flight. And help make space flight accessible to almost anyone.

Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.

The fact is: It’s true what they say about the United States. It is a land of opportunity. It is too various to get bored with it.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

The movement of search can only be from the known to the known, and all that the mind can do is to be aware that this movement will never uncover the unknown. Any movement on the part of the known is still within the field of the known.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it’s been something I’ve been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it’s something I hope to continue because it’s interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

Growing up in the place I did I never was aware of any other option but to question everything.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful: they are found because it was possible to find them.

The word ‚romance,‘ according to the dictionary, means excitement, adventure, and something extremely real. Romance should last a lifetime.

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.

There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.

Everyone carries his own inch rule of taste, and amuses himself by applying it, triumphantly, wherever he travels.

Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.