30 Quotes that Inspire me to Travel

1. ”So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” – Christopher McCandless

2. “Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages.” – Dave Barry, American writer and humorist

3. “There are 2 ways to jump off a cliff:

•  Stand at the edge, look down and tentatively step off
• Take a running leap into the abyss”

– Married With Luggage

4. “Don’t be afraid that something happens to you. Be afraid that nothing happens to you. Nothing noteworthy or exciting or breathtaking. I’m more afraid of a life where nothing extraordinary ever happens. I am more afraid of putting my dreams on a shelf and later realizing that I am too jaded or too tired to live them.” – We Are Sole Sisters

5. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese

5. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

6. “Why travel:

• Because when you leave behind the familiar, you can’t help but be changed by the foreign.
• Because comfort zones become constricting zones over time.
• Because the world was meant to be experienced, not imagined.
• Because you’ll meet people who are different than you. (Are we all the same? Not really, but that’s OK.)
• Because it will frustrate and annoy you at times, and you’ll be better because of it.
• Because you are afraid, and it’s always good to make peace with your fears.” – Chris Guillebeau, The Art of Non-Conformity

7. “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately; I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life; To put to root all that was not life and not when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau

8. “Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.” – Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat Pray Love

9. “Do me a favor… Stand up, walk to wherever the nearest window is, and just look outside. You may not know this, but there’s an entire planets-worth of summers, friends, sunsets, street lamps, songs, late nights, great films, and night skies waiting for you. Your life is as amazing as you want it to be, but first, you have to let it be that way.” – Chad Sugg

10. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

11. “An insanity of consensus, if you will – to get rich from life rather than live richly, to “do well” in the world instead of living well. And, in spite of the fact that America is famous for its unhappy rich people, most of us remain convinced that just a little more money will set life right” – Rolf Potts, Vagabonding

12. “In a way, simplifying your life for vagabonding is easier than it sounds. This is because travel by its very nature demands simplicity. If you don’t believe this, just go home and try stuffing everything you own into a backpack. This will never work, because no matter how meagerly you live at home, you can’t match the scaled-down minimalism that travel requires.” – Rolf Potts, Vagabonding

13. “I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” – Bill Bryson

14. “This is your world. Shape it, or someone else will.” – Gary Lew

15. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

16. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

17. “We have done the unimaginable. We turned our backs on a cushy job, steady paychecks and great colleagues. We have given up the comfort and stability of our ‘normal’ lives to go on a Great Adventure.” – We Are Sole Sisters

18. “Sometimes you meet people who teach you things in such a subtle manner that you don’t realize they have profoundly changed your core being.” – Bacon is Magic

19. “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” – Alan Keightley

20. “Everyone smiles in the same language.” – Unknown

21. “Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” – Dalai Lama

22. “[Travel is] humbling to the point where you have major regrets about some of the stupid things you said, some of the things you thought were right. You keep going to these countries, and it’s like, you forgot the lesson from the last time. Because the first person you encounter kind of bitch-slaps you upside the head in the most wonderful, innocent way and you realize, God, I’m still an asshole. And this guy, by doing nothing except being broke and so incredibly polite—it takes you aback, you realize, I’m still not there yet. I still have like eight miles to go before I can even get into the parking lot of humility. I have to keep going back. It’s like going back to a chiropractor to get a readjustment. That’s me in Africa, that’s me in Southeast Asia. You come back humbled and you bring that into your life.” – Henry Rollins, Punk Rock World Traveler

23. “When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon

24. “That is the charm of a map. It represents the other side of the horizon where everything is possible. It has the magic of anticipation without the toil and sweat of realization. The greatest romance ever written pales before the possibilities of adventure that lie in the faint blue trails from sea to sea. The perfect journey is never finished, the goal is always just across the next river, round the shoulder of the next mountain. There is always one more track to follow, one more mirage to explore. Achievement is the price which the wanderer pays for the right to venture.” – Rosita Forbes

25. “You know, I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with ’em later.” – Mitch Hedberg

26. “Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be bloody-minded. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things–childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves–that go on slipping , like sand, through our fingers.” – Salman Rushdie

27. “Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.” – Stephen Vincent Benét

28. “Why not seize the pleasure at once, how often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparations.” – Jane Austen

29. “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” – Diane Ackerman

30. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru

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