exploration quotes

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

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

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

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.

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn’t if you knew better.

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask ‚Why?‘ ceaselessly.

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.

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.

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

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

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

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.

With all of their benefits, and there are many, one of the things I regret about e-books is that they have taken away the necessity of trawling foreign bookshops or the shelves of holiday houses to find something to read. I’ve come across gems and stinkers that way, and both can be fun.

A queer fellow and a jolly fellow is the grasshopper. Up the mountains he comes on excursions, how high I don’t know, but at least as far and high as Yosemite tourists.

I am not solicitous to examine particularly everything here, which indeed could not be done in fifty years, because my desire is to make all possible discoveries, and return to your Highnesses, if it please our Lord, in April.

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 set up situations that involve abandoning control and finding out what happens.

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

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket – half a million dollars. It can be done.

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.

I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of, ‚What else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing?‘

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.

Fashion has become so whatever. I don’t think there are any stones left to unturn.

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.

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.

The Indians on board said that thence to Cuba was a voyage in their canoes of a day and a half; these being small dug-outs without a sail. Such are their canoes. I departed thence for Cuba, for by the signs the Indians made of its greatness, and of its gold and pearls, I thought that it must be Cipango.

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

One of the things you’re doing when you make art, apart from entertaining yourself and other people, is trying to see what ways of working feel good, what feels right.

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Women have a certain sexuality, and I think their bodies are beautiful, and I’m not embarrassed to explore that in a film. But there are things you get offered that are vulgar and violent – just like there’s a side of me that’s vulgar and violent.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.

Tomorrow morning before we depart, I intend to land and see what can be found in the neighborhood.

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.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

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

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

There’s nowhere else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere.

I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.

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

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

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

I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses.

I have come to believe that this is a mighty continent which was hitherto unknown.

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

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

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

People want to go out and travel around and meet cool people. I could just go live in Vermont, but is that what I really want?

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.

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.

Truth is a pathless land.

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.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.

I love to travel, but hate to arrive.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.