My desire was not to pass any island without taking possession, so that, one having been taken, the same may be said of all.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.

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.

Marriage is an adventure, like going to war.

One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like.

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.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

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.

I’m someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you’ve got people just streaming up the mountain – well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

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.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

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

For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement. What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

My discovery that black holes emit radiation raised serious problems of consistency with the rest of physics. I have now resolved these problems, but the answer turned out to be not what I expected.

We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect.

Not all those who wander are lost.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

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

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.

Even Hubble hasn’t found yet the end of this universe, and we don’t know that it has any end.

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

I want to destroy ownership in order that possession and enjoyment may be raised to the highest point in every section of the community.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

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.

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

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‚Eureka!‘ but ‚That’s funny…‘

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

I shall make that trip. I shall go to Korea.

A lot of people ask me when I do a stunt, ‚Jackie, are you scared?‘ Of course I’m scared. I’m not Superman.

In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.

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.

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

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

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

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

But in truth, should I meet with gold or spices in great quantity, I shall remain till I collect as much as possible, and for this purpose I am proceeding solely in quest of them.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

There’ll always be serendipity involved in discovery.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.

I walk on untrodden ground. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.

The will is a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills; Nor can it choose its rider… the riders contend for its possession.

I’m a wandering gypsy.

I would like to fly in space. Absolutely. That would be cool. I used to just do personally risky things, but now I’ve got kids and responsibilities, so I can’t be my own test pilot. That wouldn’t be a good idea. But I definitely want to fly as soon as it’s a sensible thing to do.

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

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.

Juvenile crime is not naturally born in the boy, but is largely due either to the spirit of adventure that is in him, to his own stupidity, or to his lack of discipline, according to the nature of the individual.

We are often raised as dependents then given over to teachers. It’s experience and exploration that can transform us and lead to mastery.

I want to give people a taste of the Caribbean, and show them the fun side of me.

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

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

I’m not the sort of person who gives up on things. The first time we crossed the Atlantic in the balloon, it crashed, and we went on and did the Pacific. First time we crossed the Atlantic in a boat, it sank, and we went on and got the record. So, generally speaking, we will pick ourselves up, brush ourselves down, and carry on.

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.