"Travel today is ticking things off: ‘Whew, I’ve done Machu Picchu, now I can get drunk.’ It used to take three weeks to get people in the right frame of mind, to un-brainwash them. Now it would take three months to get people’s heads straightened out… It’s a real problem now—people don’t know how to enjoy life. They want hedonism, short-term thrills."
—from Chapter 28: When It Rains in “Turn Right At Machu Picchu” by Mark Adams
24 Travel Quotes to Give You A Little Inspiration
“The great difference between voyages rests not with the ships, but with the people you meet on them”
—Amelia E. Barr
“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
“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before”
—Dalai Lama
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, dreams, conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent”
—Jim Jarmusch
“Travel is rebellion in its purest form. We follow our heart. We free ourselves of labels. We lose control willingly. We trade a role for reality. We love the unfamiliar. We trust strangers. We own only what we can carry. We search for better questions, not answers. We truly graduate. We, sometimes, choose never to come back.”
—Author Unknown
“Anything that gets the blood racing is probably worth doing.”
—Hunter S. Thompson
“Travel often; getting lost will help you find yourself.”
—The Holstee Manifesto
“Among travelers, talking about the past usually meant talking about the just passed. The expiration date on old experiences came quickly. What mattered most was where you were going next.”
“Great travel writing consists of equal parts curiosity, vulnerability and vocabulary. It is not a terrain for know-it-alls or the indecisive. The best of the genre can simply be an elegant natural history essay, a nicely writ sports piece, or a well-turned profile of a bar band and its music. A well-grounded sense of place is the challenge for the writer. We observe, we calculate, we inquire, we look for a link between what we already know and what we’re about to learn. The finest travel writing describes what’s going on when nobody’s looking.”
—Tom Miller
“I don’t want to earn my living; I want to live.”
—Oscar Wilde
“Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started”
—from Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon
“If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being an artist”
—Seth Godin
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people that are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones that do.”
—Steve Jobs
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not leave you astray ”
—Rumi
“We travel not to escape life, but for life to not escape us.”
—Anonymous
“It is a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.”
—Hugh Laurie
“If you do nothing unexpected, nothing unexpected happens.”
—Fay Weldon
“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
—Paulo Coelho
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
—Vincent van Gogh
“To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.”
—Joseph Chilton Pearce
“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you”
—Frida Kahlo
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.”
—Kurt Vonnegut from Mother Night, 1961
“Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
—Steven Pressfield from The War of Art
“If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet, he said.”
—Rachel Wolchin
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Travel Quotes: Sometimes You Just Need A Little Inspiration
“Never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay your welcome. Keep your mind open and suck in every experience. And if it hurts you know what? It’s probably worth it.”
—Richard from the movie The Beach
"People travel to far away places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home"
—Dagobert D. Runes
"A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step"
—Lao Tzu
“I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, newborn baby — I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to — I just don’t care.”
"Not all those who wander are lost"
—J.R.R. Tolkien
"Travel is glamorous only in retrospect"
—Paul Theroux
"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable"
—Cesar Cruz
"To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world”
—Freya Stark
"A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving"
—Lao Tzu
“The boy knew a lot of people in the city. That was what made traveling appeal to him — he always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them [to keep them]”
—from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
"Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember and remember more than I have seen"
—Benjamin Disraeli
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."
—Andy Warhol
"If at some point you don't ask yourself 'What have I gotten myself into?' then you're not doing it right"
—Roland Gau
“Twenty years from now you will more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
—Mark Twain
