Richard E. Byrd Quotes

In Winter, [the Antarctic] is perhaps the dreariest of places. Our base, Little America, lay in a bowl of ice, near the edge of the Ross Ice Barrier. The temperature fell as low as 72 degrees below zero. One could actually hear one's breath freeze.

Solitude is an excellent laboratory in which to observe the extent to which manners and habits are conditioned by others.

A man doesn't begin to attain wisdom until he recognizes he is no longer indispensable.

Progress grows out of motion.

What people think about you is not supposed to matter much, so long as you yourself know where the truth lies; but I have found out, as have others who move in and out of newspaper headlines, that on occasion it can matter a good deal. For once you enter the world of headlines you learn there is not one truth but two: the one which you know from the facts; and the one which the public, or at any rate a highly imaginative part of the public, acquires by osmosis.

A discordant mind, black with confusion and despair, would finish me off as thoroughly as the cold.

Give wind and tide a chance to change.

What I had not counted on was discovering how closely a man could come to dying and still not die, or want to die. That, too, was mine; and it also is to the good. For that experience resolved proportions and relationships for me as nothing else could have done; and it is surprising, approaching the final enlightenment, how little one really has to know or feel sure about.

I am hopeful that Antarctica in its symbolic robe of white will shine forth as a continent of peace as nations working together there in the cause of science set an example of international cooperation.

I am learning that a man can live profoundly without masses of things.

No woman has ever stepped on Little America and we have found it to be the most silent and peaceful place in the world.

A static hero is a public liability. Progress grows out of motion.

The human race cannot go forward without liberty. If this be correct, then all people everywhere should strive for liberty. If they achieve liberty, they will get a chance to pursue happiness and perhaps will be able to develop toward the ultimate goal of creation.

Christianity has not failed. It is simply that nations have failed to try it. There would be no war in a God-directed world.

The human race, my intuition tells me, is not outside the cosmic process and is not an accident. It is as much a part of the universe as the trees, the mountains, the aurora, and the stars.

We men who serve science serve only a reflection in a mirror.

A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the federal inspector will be in every man's counting house ... The law will of necessity have Indus[tr]ial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it, men will be hauled into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the taxpayer. An army of federal inspectors, spies, and detectives will descend upon the state.