Thanks to the interstate highway system, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
—Charles Kuralt (1934–97) American Journalist, TV Personality
A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
To be a tourist is to escape accountability. Errors and failings don’t cling to you the way they do back home. You’re able to drift across continents and languages, suspending the operation of sound thought. Tourism is the march of stupidity. You’re expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don’t know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm. You can exist on this level for weeks and months without reprimand or dire consequence. Together with thousands, you are granted immunities and broad freedoms. You are an army of fools, wearing bright polyesters, riding camels, taking pictures of each other, haggard, dysenteric, thirsty. There is nothing to think about but the next shapeless event.
—Don DeLillo (b.1936) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (c.1213–91) Persian Poet
Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel –movement through space –provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions –perhaps one of the secret terrors –of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) Scottish Novelist
My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.
—Diane Arbus (1923–71) American Photographer
The more I traveled the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.
—Shirley MacLaine (b.1934) American Actor, Dancer, Author, Activist
Peregrinations charm our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled — a kind of prisoner, and pity his case, that, from his cradle to his old age, he beholds the same, and still the same.
—Richard Burton (1925–84) Welsh Actor
A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.
—J. B. Priestley (1894–1984) English Novelist, Playwright, Critic
The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path, and I will leave a trail.
—Muriel Strode (1875–1964) American Author, Businesswoman
Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.
—Michael Palin (b.1943) English Comedian, Actor, Writer, Explorer
He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.
—Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American Novelist, Short-Story Writer
The local is a shabby thing. There’s nothing worse than bringing us back down to our own little corner, our own territory, the radiant promiscuity of the face to face. A culture which has taken the risk of the universal, must perish by the universal.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Of journeying the benefits are many: the freshness it bringeth to the heart, the seeing and hearing of marvelous things, the delight of beholding new cities, the meeting of unknown friends, and the learning of high manners.
—Pasquier Quesnel (1634–1719) French Jansenist Theologian
The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.
—Richard Bach (b.1936) American Novelist, Aviator
My heart is warm with the friend I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.
—Michael Palin (b.1943) English Comedian, Actor, Writer, Explorer
The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles, and why should not other tourists do the same.
—Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796–1865) Canadian Author, Humorist, Businessperson, Judge
Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
—Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American Writer, Philosopher
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
—Martin Buber (1878–1965) Austrian Jewish Theologian, Philosopher, Novelist
The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will — whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell (1912–90) British Biographer, Poet, Playwright, Novelist
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
God gives all men all earth to love, but since man’s heart is small, ordains for each one spot shall prove beloved over all.
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Children’s Books Writer, Short story, Novelist, Poet, Journalist
Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine Writer, Essayist, Poet
Half the fun of the travel is the esthetic of lostness.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins.
—Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–67) American Poet, Playwright, Essayist
The proper means of increasing the love we bear to our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.
—William Shenstone (1714–63) British Poet, Landscape Gardener
All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (1892–1973) British Scholar, Author
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 (1928–2014) American Poet
Does this boat go to Europe, France?
—Anita Loos (1888–1981) American Actor, Novelist, Screenwriter
Any successful journey begins by packing your luggage full of imagination.
—Kathrine Palmer Peterson (1956–2006) American Author of Grief Books
The true traveler is he who goes on foot, and even then, he sits down a lot of the time.
—Colette (1873–1954) French Novelist, Performer
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!
—Bob Dylan (b.1941) American Singer-songwriter
Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives — from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango — with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to-date scripts for actors on the tourists stage.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American Historian, Academic, Attorney, Writer
There’s a land where the mountains are nameless, And the rivers all run God knows where; There are lives that are erring and aimless, And deaths that just hang by a hair; There are hardships that nobody reckons; There’s a land – oh, it beckons and beckons, And I want to go back – and I will.
—Robert W. Service (1874–1958) Scottish Poet, Author
In the world through which I travel, I am endlessly creating myself.
—Frantz Fanon (1925–61) French-Martinique Psychoanalyst, Philosopher
No one travelling on a business trip would be missed if he failed to arrive.
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American Economist, Social Critic
Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.
—Italo Calvino (1923–85) Italian Novelist, Essayist, Journalist
The traveler, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he asks himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited.
—Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) British Novelist, Playwright, Critic
The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful.
—Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) South African Novelist, Short-Story Writer
We travelers are in very hard circumstances. If we say nothing but what has been said before us, we are dull and have observed nothing. If we tell anything new, we are laughed at as fabulous and romantic.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer