Polar Exploration Quotes

Nansen had moreover introduced a startling new concept into Polar exploration. He had deliberately cut off his lines of retreat. His route was from the desolate east coast to the inhabited west. This was not bravado, but calculated exploitation of the instinct of self-preservation. It drove him on; there was no incentive to look back. ~ Roland Huntford

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised. ~ Apsley Cherry-Garrard

When I think of the causes for which people more commonly give up their lives-nationalism, religion, ethnicity-it seems to me that a thirty-five pound bag of rocks and the lost world it represents, is not such a bad thing to die for. ~ Anne Fadiman

The truth is that the scientific value of Polar exploration is greatly exaggerated. The thing that takes men on such hazardous trips is really not any thirst for knowledge, but simply a yearning for adventure ... A Polar explorer always talks grandly of sacrificing his fingers and toes to science. It is an amiable pretention, but there is no need to take it seriously. ~ H.L. Mencken

The English too, were turning their eyes to the South. In 1769, there was to be a transit of the planet Venus across the disc of the sun, a rare event which astronomers wanted to observe. The newly discovered island of Tahiti was judged the perfect site. The Royal Society in London asked the Royal Navy to organize the expedition. The Navy obliged. This was to have profound and unlooked-for consequences. It led to the virtual monopolization by naval officers of British Polar exploration until the first decade of this century. The voyage inspired by the transit of Venus was commanded by a man of quiet genius, James Cook, one of the greatest of discoverers. ~ Roland Huntford

I don't want to be buried in the ground, rotting, with all those worms. What I would love is to have my body dropped where you have those big icebergs and the water is so cold and pure, to be eaten by a polar bear or a seal or an otter. ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme

I believe in a tongue-first exploration of the world. Food is our most immediate daily relationship to our ecosystem, and there is something delectable and intriguing about it. ~ Natalie Jeremijenko

Dover's cliffs call to mind the Roman invasion; the Battle of Britain; our proximity to, yet difference from, mainland Europe; and international trade and exploration, both fair and exploitative. ~ Julian Baggini

Get out and find ... the country. And ourselves. ~ William Least Heat-Moon

It is important to distinguish the difficulty of describing and learning a piece of notation from the difficulty of mastering its implications. [ ... ] Indeed, the very suggestiveness of a notation may make it seem harder to learn because of the many properties it suggests for exploration. ~ Kenneth E. Iverson

Perceiving how things are is a mode of exploring how things appear. How they appear is, however, an aspect of how they are. To explore appearance is thus to explore the environment, the world. To discover how things are, from how they appear, is to discover an order or pattern in their appearance. The process of perceiving, of finding out how things are, is a process of meeting the world; it is an activity of skillful exploration. ~ Alva Noe

There was the emptiness of space I was afraid to fall into, but the only real fear I'd ever actually had was to dive into the emptiness inside of myself. ~ Orson De Witt

We need the tonic of wildness ... At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Like it or not, war (cold or hot) is the most powerful funding driver in the public arsenal. Lofty goals such as curiosity, discovery, exploration, and science can get you money for modest-size projects, provided they resonate with the political and cultural views of the moment. But big, expensive activities are inherently long term, and require sustained investment that must survive economic fluctuations and changes in the political winds. In all eras, across time and culture, only war, greed, and the celebration of royal or religious power have fulfilled that funding requirement. Today, the power of kings is supplanted by elected governments, and the power of religion is often expressed in nonarchitectural undertakings, leaving war and greed to run the show. Sometimes those two drivers work hand in hand, as in the art of profiteering from the art of war. But war itself remains the ultimate and most compelling rationale. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations. It is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs. It is necessary that we examine them. ~ Julia Cameron

Instead of always worrying about being efficient, I wanted to spend time on exploration, experimentation, digression, and failed attempts that didn't always look productive. ~ Gretchen Rubin

Nothing is more symptomatic of the enervation, of the decompression of the Western imagination, than our incapacity to respond to the landings on the Moon. Not a single great poem, picture, metaphor has come of this breathtaking act, of Prometheus' rescue of Icarus or of Phaeton in flight towards the stars. ~ George Steiner

Today, we are on a path of decay. We are seeing the book close on five decades of accomplishment as the leader in human space exploration. ~ Eugene Cernan

The spiritual journey is an adventure of exploration that gradually starts to open up before us when we are ready to begin asking the questions, "Who am I? and "Who are you? ~ Mac MacKenzie

The United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward, and so will space. ~ John F. Kennedy

It is said that there are three stages of life for those of us who live our lives in circles. These are rejection, exploration, and acceptance. ~ Claire North

Our universe is a sorry little affair unless it has in it something for every age to investigate. ~ Seneca.

In every well-written play the battle rages between the primary powers of Good and Evil, and it is this battle which constitutes the life impulse of the play, its driving force, and is basic to all plot structures ... In any true piece of art ... the beginning and the end are, or should be, polar in principle. All the main qualities of the first section should transform themselves into their opposites in the last section. ~ Michael Chekhov

We'd never have got a chance to go outside and look at the earth if it hadn't been for space exploration and NASA. ~ James Lovelock

The strikes continue ruthlessly. I brace for each blow, numbering it as the heat subsides, and enjoying her tender exploration of my swollen lips in between. The rhythm pulls me through the assault and, all too soon, I acknowledge the tenth strike. ~ Felicity Brandon

Some find it easier to bend their knees than their minds. Exciting exploration is preferred to plodding implementation; speculation seems more fun than consecration, and so is trying to soften the hard doctrines instead of submitting to them. Worse still, by not obeying, these ... lack real knowing. Lacking real knowing, they cannot defend their faith and may become critics instead of defenders! ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration. ~ Jeff Bezos

His feeling for the South was not so much historic as it was
of the core and desire of dark romanticism--that unlimited and
inexplicable drunkenness, the magnetism of some men's blood that
takes them into the heart of the heat, and beyond that, into the
polar and emerald cold of the South as swiftly as it took the heart
of that incomparable romanticist who wrote The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner, beyond which there is nothing. And this desire of his was
unquestionably enhanced by all he had read and visioned, by the
romantic halo that his school history cast over the section, by the
whole fantastic distortion of that period where people were said to
live in "mansions," and slavery was a benevolent institution,
conducted to a constant banjo-strumming, the strewn largesses of
the colonel and the shuffle-dance of his happy dependents, where
all women were pure, gentle, and beautiful, all men chivalrous and
brave, and the Rebel horde a company of swagger, death-mocking
cavaliers. Years later, when he could no longer think of the
barren spiritual wilderness, the hostile and murderous intrenchment
against all new life--when their cheap mythology, their legend of
the charm of their manner, the aristocratic culture of their lives,
the quaint sweetness of their drawl, made him writhe--when he could
think of no return to their life and its swarming superstition
without weariness and h ~ Thomas Wolfe

Coordinates streamed into her mind while she yanked on her environment suit, foregoing every safety check she'd ever learned.

'Alex, we will try to help him together, but it is far too dangerous - '

She grabbed the module she used to access the circuitry of the ship, bypassed Valkyrie and fired up the Caeles Prism.

'Alex - '

She opened a wormhole in the middle of the cabin, set its exit point at the coordinates Valkyrie had provided, and ran through it. ~ G.S. Jennsen

It's Earth Day today. Let me tell you something about polar bears. They're endangered but you have to be careful because a polar bear is one of the few animals that will stalk a human. If you go to where polar bears live, it might stalk you and when you're on the plane going home, it might be behind you reading. ~ Craig Ferguson

What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre. ~ Robert Ballard

To most people in the U.K., indeed throughout Western Europe, space exploration is primarily perceived as 'what NASA does'. This perception is - in many respects - a valid one. Superpower rivalry during the Cold War ramped up U.S. and Soviet space efforts to a scale that Western Europe had no motive to match. ~ Martin Rees

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find. ~ Edmund Hillary

It is often said that there are very few places left on earth that have yet to be discovered. But those who say this are usually referring to places that exist at the human scale. Take a magnifying glass to any part of your house and you will find a whole new world to explore. Use a powerful microscope and you will find another, complete with a zoo of living organisms of the most fantastic nature. Alternatively, use a telescope and a whole universe of possibilities will open up before you. ~ Mark Miodownik

Eight: the age of exploration, of ghosts and secret forays; the age at which a mystery lurks behind every curtain and every armoire opens into a magical world, which you may enter at any time, but who knows when you will return. ~ Carmen Posadas

Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder." As Lori describes it, ladders are limiting - people can move up or down, on or off. Jungle gyms offer more creative exploration. There's only one way to get to the top of a ladder, but there are many ways to get to the top of a jungle gym. The jungle gym model benefits everyone, ~ Sheryl Sandberg

So, you know, I think the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending, on our planet. ~ Robert Ballard

If someone else notices our qualities and talents, we think those parts of us must be worthwhile. Our potential floats like an island in the sea - uncharted, unexplored. We long for someone to discover us, admire us, colonize us. But why must it be another person? Why can't you sail that voyage and explore yourself? ~ Vironika Tugaleva