Quotes About Exploration

The only way most people recognize their limits is by trespassing on them.

I've been a little bit obsessed with religion, without being a religious person, for about a decade.

So I started out for God knows where. I guess I'll know when I get there.

Running down a dream... working on a mystery... going wherever it leads...

Columbus brought sugarcane to Hispaniola, the first European settlement in the New World, on his second voyage, in 1493.

As the Iberian explorers made their way down the African coast—the Portuguese going around the Horn to East Asia, the Spaniards cutting west to the Americas—both powers had two main goals in mind: finding precious metals and planting sugarcane. (Oh, and spreading the word of God.) The

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

In Seattle, I soon found that my radical ideas and aesthetic explorations - ideas and explorations that in Richmond, Virginia, might have gotten me stoned to death with hush puppies - were not only accepted but occasionally applauded.

Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.

A place where they could be people they never dreamed they'd be.

One must go somewhere, I suppose, it is abominable to keep still in nothingness

Walking through a town can be like flicking through a picture book.

What is admired is success, achievement, the quality of performance," writes the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "rather than the quality of experience." But what if we don't want to become virtuoso musicians or renowned artists? What if we only want to dabble in these things, to see if they might subtly change our outlook on the world or even, as we try to learn them, change us? What if we just want to enjoy them?

Children, in a very real sense, have beginners' minds, open to wider possibilities. They see the world with fresher eyes, are less burdened with preconception and past experience, and are less guided by what they know to be true. They are more likely to pick up details that adults might discard as irrelevant. Because they're less concerned with being wrong or looking foolish, children often ask questions that adults won't ask.

As you plunge into learning some art or skill, the world around you appears new and bursting with infinite horizons. Each day brims with new discoveries as you take your tentative first steps, slowly pushing the bounds of exploration. You make mistakes, but even these are empowering, because they are mistakes you have never made before.

When there are too many choices, or the answer does not seem obvious, it seems better to go with the flow; after all, you might miss out on something good.

cultivation, of that spirit of the novice: the naïve optimism, the hypervigilant alertness that comes with novelty and insecurity, the willingness to look foolish, and the permission to ask obvious questions—the unencumbered beginner's mind.

Children make up the best songs, anyway. Better than grown-ups. Kids are always working on songs and throwing them away, like little origami things or paper airplanes. They don't care if they lose it; they'll just make another one.

slept all night in the cedar grove, i was born to ramble, born to rove, some men are searchin' for the holy grail, but there ain't nothin' sweeter than ridin' the rails

using parking meters as walking sticks.

Fishin' for a good time starts with throwin' in your line.

Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now.

How many roads must a man walk down before he admits he is lost?

The best place to find a new mine is next door to an old mine.