Quotes from Robert Ballard

The Titanic will protect itself.

Almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range and we didn't enter it until after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon. So we went to the moon, played golf up there, before we went to the largest feature on our own planet.

I can't travel without Sudoku.

If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.

You don't let a historic site rot.

I love all of the Earth.

Fifty percent of our country that we own, have all legal jurisdiction, have all rights to do whatever we want, lies beneath the sea and we have better maps of Mars than that 50 percent.

Follow your own passion - not your parents', not your teachers' - yours.

The body is sort of a pain. It has to go to the bathroom. It has to be comfortable. But the spirit is indestructible. It can move at the speed of light.

I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.

There's probably more history now preserved underwater than in all the museums of the world combined. And there's no law governing that history. It's finders keepers.

I mean, there is amazing amount of oil and gas and other resources out beneath the sea. It's staggering.

I think the most important thing people can do to save our planet and the human race is to empower women!

So, you know, I think the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending, on our planet.

There are more active volcanoes beneath the sea than on land by two orders of magnitude.

I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student, I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle, which is a bunch of crap.

Remember to always dream. More importantly, work hard to make those dreams come true and never give up.

My family came in 1635 from England and settled in Williamsburg. Shortly after, they split up; half went to New England and half stayed in Virginia. I'm a Virginian Ballard.

Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in San Diego next to the ocean. The ocean was my friend - my best friend.