Quotes About Exploration

there were other ways of living in this world than the one he knew, that his parents' way was not the only way.

We find ourselves only by looking to what we're not. You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.

For one whole year he did nothing but drive, traveling back and forth across America as he waited for the money to run out.

If everyone keeps asking you the same questions, maybe you have to come up with new answers just to stay awake.

wandering is intimacy's helpmate.

It's also a good idea to practice microdosing outside of the context in which you make important decisions. Take time over the weekend or away from work to experience the effects of microdosing on your body and mind. It will help you develop the self-awareness necessary to sidestep these potential pitfalls so you can facilitate a more beneficial experience for yourself.

The real question is not where do ideas come from but where do they go.

As the psychologist Steven Pinker puts it, "Exposure to worlds that can be seen only through the eyes of a foreigner, an explorer, or a historian can turn an unquestioned norm ('That's the way it's done') into an explicit observation ('That's what our tribe happens to do now')." This is the point that Herodotus was making when he told the story of the Greeks and the Indians.

Gopnik compares baby consciousness to that of an adult dumped into the middle of a foreign city, totally overwhelmed, constantly turning to see new things, struggling to make sense of it all. Things are even worse for a baby, actually, because even the most stressed-out adult can choose to think of something else: we can look forward to getting back to the hotel; imagine how we would describe our trip to friends; fantasize, daydream, or pray. The baby just is, trapped in the here and now.

I am particularly impressed by the research of Tania Singer, a cognitive neuroscientist, and Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk—two scholars working together to explore the distinction between empathy and compassion.

ANOTHER MOTIVATION FOR activities such as mountain climbing is curiosity about one's own capacities.

there are many things about yourself you just can't learn while sitting on your bum. Everyday life offers few opportunities to check out your capacity for bravery in the face of death or your tolerance for extreme physical challenges. If you want to know this about yourself, to test your mettle, activities such as mountain climbing seem like just the thing.

I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind ... I feel that life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it.

Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.

A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.

The aging Adams delightedly describes being surrounded by books on so many different subjects that interested him as "baits on fishhooks".

The life-changing encounters that John Quincy Adams made as an adolescent on his own in Stockholm began with a friendship he struck up at a bookstore.

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors.

We must not be content to memorize the beautiful formulas of our illustrious predecessors. Let us go out and study beautiful nature.

The forests have taught man liberty.

We are not really spying, we're just satisfying our curiosity.

Do you think there's intelligent life in space?' He grunted. 'Mum always says they'll be just like us. But I'd hate it if they were just like us.

Magic let you jump over the "why" and make use of what was hidden, all from the comfort of your kitchen sink.

You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.