Quotes from Thor Heyerdahl

For every minute, the future is becoming the past.

Those who have experienced the most, have suffered so much that they have ceased to hate. Hate is more for those with a slightly guilty conscience, and who by chewing on old hate in times of peace wish to demonstrate how great they were during the war.

Man invents the most inhuman armaments to assault others so like himself that uniforms are needed to distinguish between friend and foe.

One learns more from listening than speaking.And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls.

In fighting nature, man can win every battle except the last. If he should win that too, he will perish, like an embryo cutting its own umbilical cord.

We have always been taught that navigation is the result of civilization, but modern archeology has demonstrated very clearly that this is not so.

We must wake up to the insane reality of our time. We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors condemned.

I was in uniform for four years, and I know that heroism doesn't occur from taking orders, but rather from people who through their own willpower and strength are willing to sacrifice their lives for an idea.

Therefore, I feel convinced that any political picture can be changed to suit the needs of the powers that be.

I also believe that when one dies, one may wake up to the reality that proves that time does not exist.

Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication - particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials.

Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti.

Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others. I realized this from the start during World War II.

It is also rarer to find happiness in a man surrounded by the miracles of technology than among people living in the desert of the jungle and who by the standards set by our society would be considered destitute and out of touch.

Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

But if we begin thinking about the world being over 100 million years old, then it's absolutely by chance that you and I are sitting here alive today, while all the others are dead or have never been born.

They're specialists, the whole lot of them, and they don't believe in a method of work which cuts into every field of science from botany to archaeology. They limit their own scope in order to be able to dig in the depths with more concentration for details. Modern research demands that every special branch shall dig in its own hole. It's not usual for anyone to sort out what comes up out of the holes and try to put it all together.

Through a misunderstanding one native visitor was shot on board one of the ships, and a dozen others were shot ashore, while the Europeans got off with the loss of one tablecloth and of a few hats which were stolen while they had them on their heads.

Purgatory was a bit damp,' said Bengt, 'but heaven was more or less as I'd imagined it.

We are critical of the priests who burned the paper books of the Aztecs because contemporary Europe looked down upon the non-Christian Americans and wanted to destroy their heathen beliefs. But we ourselves have so little esteem for these same beliefs that although the most important ones were recorded by the early Spaniards, we reject them as the fables of primitive nations.

An outsider may wonder how deep a specialist must dig his hole before he realizes that he has lost sight of the horizon...

For every minute, the future is becoming the past.

Purgatory was a bit damp, said Bengt, but heaven is more or less as I'd imagined it.