Ernest Shackleton Quotes

• I chose life over death for myself and my friends... I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Believe, Would Be, Reach Out

  383 Copy quote

• Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; Small Chance of Fame in Case of Success.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Funny, Clever, Smart

  374 Copy quote

• Difficulties are just things to overcome after all.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Overcoming, Difficulty

  "Shackleton". Book by Roland Huntford, 2013.

  287 Copy quote

• By endurance we conquer.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Endurance, Conquer

  285 Copy quote

• If you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you've got to keep going.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Leader, Looks, Fellows

  305 Copy quote

• Life to me is the greatest of all games. The danger lies in treating it as a trivial game, a game to be taken lightly, and a game in which the rules don't matter much. The rules matter a great deal. The game has to be played fairly or it is no game at all. And even to win the game is not the chief end. The chief end is to win it honorably and splendidly.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Motivational, Integrity, Lying

  296 Copy quote

• I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Lines

  218 Copy quote

• Optimism is true moral courage.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Life, Happiness, Optimism

  214 Copy quote

• Loneliness is the penalty of leadership, but the man who has to make the decisions is assisted greatly if he feels that there is no uncertainty in the minds of those who follow him, and that his orders will be carried out confidently and in the expectation of success.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Loneliness, Men, Order

  Ernest Shackleton (2015). “South”, p.119, Sheba Blake Publishing

  243 Copy quote

• When things are easy, I hate it.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Hate, I Hate, Easy

  158 Copy quote

• No person who has not spent a period of his life in those 'stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole' will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man

  Ernest Shackleton

  Running, Flower, Mean

  Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, Sir Tannatt William Edgeworth David (1909). “The Heart of the Antarctic: Being the Story of the British Antarctic Expedition 1907-1909”

  163 Copy quote

• Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Umpires, Effort, Classic

  138 Copy quote

• A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Leadership, Men, Vision

  Ernest Shackleton (2015). “South”, p.78, Sheba Blake Publishing

  156 Copy quote

• We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Men, Soul, Naked

  Ernest Shackleton (2015). “South”, p.191, Sheba Blake Publishing

  123 Copy quote

• I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Axes, Ice, Snow

  104 Copy quote

• I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Men, Clouds, Sky

  Ernest Shackleton (2004). “South: The Endurance Expedition”, p.149, Penguin

  114 Copy quote

• Optimism is the true moral courage

  Ernest Shackleton

  Optimism, Moral, Moral Courage

  97 Copy quote

• I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Lions, Donkey

  92 Copy quote

• One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Trying, Speech, Intangible

  Ernest Shackleton (2015). “South”, p.194, Sheba Blake Publishing

  83 Copy quote

• After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeying - the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea

  Ernest Shackleton

  Sea, British, Expeditions

  106 Copy quote

• I do not know what 'moss' stands for in the proverb , but if it stood for useful knowledge... I gathered more moss by rolling than I ever did at school.

  Ernest Shackleton

  School, Moss, Rolling

  98 Copy quote

• The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Ice, Breathing, Surfing

  Ernest Shackleton (2015). “South”, p.59, Sheba Blake Publishing

  95 Copy quote

• (Was he talking about a polar expedition, or marriage?) -Jorge Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Journey, Men, Talking

  111 Copy quote

• If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Class, Alcohol, Firsts

  65 Copy quote

• Teachers should be very careful not to spoil their pupils' taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition.

  Ernest Shackleton

  Teacher, Taste, Tasks

  Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (1991). “South: The Story of Shackleton's Last Expedition, 1914-1917”, Random House (UK)

  65 Copy quote

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