Thor Heyerdahl famous quotes

Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#People #Mind #Borders

For every minute, the future is becoming the past.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Past #Becoming #Minutes

Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others. I realized this from the start during World War II.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#War #Judging #Mind

I also believe that when one dies, one may wake up to the reality that proves that time does not exist.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Believe #Reality #Wake Up

In my experience, it is rarer to find a really happy person in a circle of millionaires than among vagabonds.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Circles #Vagabonds #Millionaire

One learns more from listening than speaking.And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Wall #Wind #People

It is also rarer to find happiness in a man surrounded by the miracles of technology than among people living in the desert of the jungle and who by the standards set by our society would be considered destitute and out of touch.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Technology #Men #People

I was in uniform for four years, and I know that heroism doesn't occur from taking orders, but rather from people who through their own willpower and strength are willing to sacrifice their lives for an idea.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Sacrifice #Order #Years

We are not talking about esthetics. We are talking about life: survival of Man. We must train young people to get another vision of Nature. We call it 'wilderness,' and we think it is progress to get further and further away from it. How crazy! Where would we have been if Nature had not built us up?
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Crazy #Men #Thinking

Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication - particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Communication #Inspiration #Sea

Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Military #Airplane #Land

We must wake up to the insane reality of our time. We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors condemned.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Reality #Axes #People

This world has seen a great many civilizations. And many of them have survived for longer periods than ours up to the present. They were all as sure as we are today of having founded the first eternal civilization. We today differ from them in having our western civilization spread to embrace the entire planet, leaving no room on any continent for any other culture to take over if we fail.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Other Cultures #Civilization #Leaving

Land! An island! We devoured it greedily with our eyes and woke the others, who tumbled out drowsily and stared in all directions as if they thought our bow was about to run on to a beach. Screaming seabirds formed a bridge across the sky in the direction of the distant island, which stood out sharper against the horizon as the red background widened and turned gold with the approach of the sun and the full daylight.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Running #Beach #Eye

In a city a man may feel second to none. But alone in the immensity of the universe, among all the creatures that preceded man and built up the human species, even a most fervent atheist will wonder if Darwin found the visible road but not the invisible mechanism.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#God #Atheist #Men

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Simple #Men #Civilization

Those who have experienced the most, have suffered so much that they have ceased to hate. Hate is more for those with a slightly guilty conscience, and who by chewing on old hate in times of peace wish to demonstrate how great they were during the war.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#War #Hate #Wish

Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? I guarantee nothing but a free trip to Peru and the South Sea islands and back, but you will find good use for your technical abilities on the voyage. Reply at once.' Next day the following telegram arrived from Torstein: COMING. TORSTEIN.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Sea #Islands #Support

Once in a while you find yourself in an odd situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Finding Yourself #World #Way

In fighting nature, man can win every battle except the last. If he should win that too, he will perish, like an embryo cutting its own umbilical cord.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Cutting #Fighting #Winning

I don't believe in war as a solution to any kind of conflict, nor do I believe in heroism on the battlefield because I have never seen any.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#War #Believe #Heroism

I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Time #Believe #Doe

But if we begin thinking about the world being over 100 million years old, then it's absolutely by chance that you and I are sitting here alive today, while all the others are dead or have never been born.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Thinking #Years #Sitting

We have always been taught that navigation is the result of civilization, but modern archeology has demonstrated very clearly that this is not so.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Civilization #Taught #Navigation

It is progress when a centuries-old oak is cut down to give space for a road sign.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Cutting #Space #Giving

It is progress when weapons are improved to kill more people at a longer range.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#People #Progress #Weapons

A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Best Friend #Good Friend #Enemy

...arranging the journey was so difficult. Getting home again was much easier.
-- Thor Heyerdahl

#Home #Journey #Sailing