Quotes About Exploration

It adds up, but I deem it all necessary, even the camera gear. I enjoy photographing the otherworldly colors and shapes presented in the convoluted depths of slot canyons and the prehistoric artwork preserved in their alcoves.

Mountains are the means, the man is the end. The goal is not to reach the tops of mountains, but to improve the man. —WALTER BONATTI, Italian climber

I did get myself into this. Somehow, in some convoluted way, it's what I've been looking for in my life. How else did I come to be here? We create our lives. I don't fully understand why, but little by little I get that somehow I've wanted something like this to happen. I've been looking for adventure, and I've found it.

You'll never find your limits until you've gone too far

Sometimes when I'm in a bookstore or library, I am overwhelmed by all the things that I do not know. Then I am seized by a powerful desire to read all the books, one by one.

Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS, EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE. USE THEM TOGETHER. USE THEM IN PEACE.

It is a bitter thought, but you must face it. The planets you may one day possess. But the stars are not for man.

He was moving through a new order of creation, of which few men had ever dreamed. Beyond the realms of sea and land and air and space lay the realms of fire, which he alone had been privileged to glimpse. It was too much to expect that he would also understand.

a well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.

But at least we have answered one ancient question. We are not alone. The stars will never again be the same to us.

Alvin was an explorer, and all explorers are seeking something they have lost. It is seldom that they find it, and more seldom still that the attainment brings them greater happiness than the quest.

Science fiction could now be made far more convincing by science fact.

He did not wander aimlessly, though he never knew which village would be his next port of call. He was seeking no particular place, but a mood, an influence—indeed, a way of life.

La única posibilidad de descubrir los límites de lo posible es aventurarse un poco más allá de ellos, hacia lo imposible.

Discovery was no longer a happy ship.

Yet if there were no hazards there would be no achievement, no sense of adventure.

However much the universe and its mysteries might call him, this was where he was born and where he belonged. It would never satisfy him, yet always he would return. He had gone half-way across the Galaxy to learn this simple truth.

The core of Jupiter, forever beyond human reach, was a diamond as big as the Earth.

for there was no vessel—at least of Man's making—anywhere between her and the infinitely distant stars.

Many scientists flatly denied the possibility. They pointed out that Discovery, the fastest ship ever designed, would take twenty thousand years to reach Alpha Centauri — and millions of years to travel any appreciable distance across the Galaxy. Even if, during the centuries to come, propulsion systems improved out of all recognition, in the end they would meet the impassable barrier of the speed of light, which no material object could exceed.

Please leave me alone; let me go on to the stars.

an expressive phrase coined by a Princeton mathematician of the last century: "Wormholes in space.

The room you are about to enter," the Eagle said, setting up Nicole's wheelchair, "is the largest single room in this domain. It is half a kilometer across at its widest point. Inside currently is a model of the Milky Way Galaxy.