It’s time to commit to finding the answer, to search for life beyond Earth. Mankind has a deep need to explore, to learn, to know. We also happen to be sociable creatures. It is important for us to know if we are alone in the dark.

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.

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.

Some day science may have the existence of mankind in power, and the human race can commit suicide by blowing up the world.

Voyagers discover that the world can never be larger than the person that is in the world; but it is impossible to foresee this, it is impossible to be warned.

This self-love is the instrument of our preservation; it resembles the provision for the perpetuity of mankind: it is necessary, it is dear to us, it gives us pleasure, and we must conceal it.

Everywhere is nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

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.

Surely the wake left behind by mankind’s forward march reveals its movement just as clearly as the spray thrown up elsewhere by the prow.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

I think all documentaries leave out areas of people’s lives. Which is good. There are areas that need not be explored.

I got my first computer in the 6th grade or so. As soon as I got it, I was interested in finding out how it worked and how the programs worked and then figuring out how to write programs at just deeper and deeper levels within the system.

Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

I love trying new things.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

Philosophy begins in wonder.

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

I still make sure to go, at least once every year, to a country where things cannot be taken for granted, and where there is either too much law and order or too little.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I’ve been called a great adventurer.

Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.

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

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

I could do one show after another in China for the rest of my life and still die ignorant. There’s a lot of places left to go.

Solitude is independence.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

I love to travel, but hate to arrive.

I need more sex, OK? Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world.

Circumstances give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

Men love to wonder, and that is the seed of science.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

To be able to travel the world, especially to places I never thought I’d be… it’s really, you know, still fascinating for me.

I’ve been everywhere in the world, seen everything, had everything a man can have.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

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

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.

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.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

An intellectual is a person who’s found one thing that’s more interesting than sex.

My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It’s sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people.

However, because Britain is young and exciting, I did show my second line here once or twice.

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.

I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever – wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails.

When I was researching my book ‚The 33 Strategies of War‘, I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

Curiosity is one of the most permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.