Thor Heyerdahl Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Inspirational, Travel, Adventure

  113 Copy quote

• Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Simple, Men, Civilization

  "Two-Way Ticket to Paradise', book review of Thor Heyerdahl, Fatu-Hiva". The New York Times, August 29, 1975.

  29 Copy quote

• 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

  41 Copy quote

• For every minute, the future is becoming the past.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Past, Becoming, Minutes

  31 Copy quote

• 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

  38 Copy quote

• Any scientist can testify that a dead ocean means a dead planet .... No national law, no national precautions can save the planet. The ocean, more than any other part of our planet, ... is a classic example of the absolute need for international global action.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Ocean, Mean, Law

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Fighting, Cutting, Winning

  32 Copy quote

• 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, Doe

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Inspirational, Funny, Finding Yourself

  1948 The Kon- Tiki Expedition: By Raft across the South Seas (translated by F H Lyon).

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  Next Day, Islands, Sea

  Thor Heyerdahl (1990). “Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

  33 Copy quote

• It says in the Bible, in plain words, that God made a self-portrait. He created man in His own image - man and woman - for God is Love.Why should we start thinking of a god up in the clouds with wings, if He dwells within us in the spirit of Love?!

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Men, Thinking, Clouds

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

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

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Cutting, Space, Giving

  35 Copy quote

• 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, Standards Set

  29 Copy quote

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

  Thor Heyerdahl

  People, Progress, Weapons

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  Thor Heyerdahl (1952). “The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas”

  33 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• Man invents the most inhuman armaments to assault others so like himself that uniforms are needed to distinguish between friend and foe.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Men, Uniforms, Assault

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  19 Copy quote

• 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

  28 Copy quote

• 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

  25 Copy quote

• ...arranging the journey was so difficult. Getting home again was much easier.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Home, Journey, Sailing

  Thor Heyerdahl (1958). “Aku-Aku The Secret of Easter Island”

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  17 Copy quote

• 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

  53 Copy quote

• 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, Government

  27 Copy quote

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