The quote database

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

If you are a brave man you will do nothing: if you are fearful you may do much, for none but cowards have need to prove their bravery.

More than once in my short life I have been struck by the value of the man who is blind to what appears to be a common-sense certainty: he achieves the impossible.

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion.

Resolution is an act of courage in single instances, and if it becomes a characteristic trait, it is a habit of the mind.

Theory must also take into account the human element; it must accord a place to courage, to boldness, even to rashness.

War is the province of danger, and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior.

I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks.

And when you fall throughout life—and maybe even tonight after a few too many glasses of champagne—fall forward.

The point is, every graduate here today has the training and the talent to succeed. But do you have guts to fail?

I want to fall… forward. At least I figure that way I’ll see what I’m about to hit.

The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts.

For history does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

A man's life does not develop rightly without it, and what is called an 'improvident marriage' often appears to me a noble, righteous, and prudent act.

If an idea, I reasoned, were really a valuable one, there must be some way of realising it.

But with common sense, self-reliance, and attention to the work in hand, any woman can pursue the medical calling without risk.

Great events are usually preceded by apparently small things.

During this night journey I put myself both in feeling and in fact in a blind man's place—the best lesson I ever had to develop deliberation and keenness of touch.

Bring now, O Zeus, any difficulty that thou pleasest, for I have means given to me by thee and powers for honoring myself through the things which happen.

Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man.

It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are.

At any rate, we were on the move at last, and if dangers and difficulties lay ahead we could meet and overcome them.

Fear is only inverted faith; it is faith in evil instead of good.

Wonderful like is the case of boldness in civil business: what first? boldness; what second and third? boldness.

You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man