There's no denying that much of our travel inspiration comes from trail-blazing adventurers who have stepped out into the unknown before we have. Every generation of journalists, poets, musicians, chefs, and artists has produced prolific travelers who inspire us not only with their actions and the destinations they seek out, but with their words.
To fuel your wanderlust, nourish your soul, and inform your next trip, here are 51 travel quotes we love:
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“If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move. As far as you can, as much as you can. Across the ocean, or simply across the river. The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody. Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.” — Anthony Bourdain
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“We travel for romance, we travel for architecture, and we travel to be lost.” — Ray Bradbury
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"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." — Mark Twain
- “So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.” — Jack Kerouac
- “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
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“What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit, tracing the course of obscure rivers, checking elevations, consulting the marginal notes to see what a little circle with a flag on it signifies (a Burg or Schloss) and what’s the difference between a pictogram of an airplane with a circle around it and one without (one is a Flughafen, the other a Flugplatz), issuing small profound ‘Hmmmms’ and nodding my head gravely without having the faintest idea why.” — Bill Bryson
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"To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice." — Elizabeth Gilbert
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“I learned a long time ago that trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times.” — Anthony Bourdain
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"Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively, unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence." — Eleanor Roosevelt
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“One of my tips for travel is that everyone talks about going off the beaten path, but you really don’t have to go off the beaten path—just kind of one block over.” — Samantha Brown
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“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back, and reasons to stay.” — Dalai Lama
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The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time. And travel whets the emotions, turns upside down the memory bank, and the golden coins scatter.” ― Frances Mayes
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“There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.” — Bill Bryson
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“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” — Susan Sontag
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“When overseas you learn more about your own country, than you do the place you’re visiting.” — Clint Borgen
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"As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world." — Virginia Woolf
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“If your dreams don’t scare you, they are too small.” — Richard Branson
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“Once a year go somewhere you have never been before.” — Dalai Lama
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"I'm obsessed with Chinese food and culture. It's food that I adore above all others." — Andrew Zimmern
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“I think you need to see a place for what it is, not what you project onto it. Let the place breathe a little, you may enjoy it more.” — Samantha Brown
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“Where you come from does matter—but not nearly as much as where you are headed.” — Jodi Picoult
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“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” — John A. Shedd
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"If you find yourself drawn to an event against all logic, go. The universe is telling you something." — Gloria Steinem
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“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
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"I tell young chefs to always have their feet on the ground…to travel with their eyes and ears open and absorb everything, but never forget who they are or where they come from." — Massimo Bottura
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“I’m a big believer in winging it. I’m a big believer that you’re never going to find perfect city travel experience or the perfect meal without a constant willingness to experience a bad one. Letting the happy accident happen is what a lot of vacation itineraries miss, I think, and I’m always trying to push people to allow those things to happen rather than stick to some rigid itinerary.” — Anthony Bourdain
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“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” – Helen Keller
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“I don’t really separate work and play—it’s all living.” — Richard Branson
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"The greatest food city in the world is New York City, just in terms of depth and breadth, variety, size, infrastructure." — Andrew Zimmern
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"Drink heavily with locals whenever possible." — Anthony Bourdain
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"My phone is my favorite travel gadget because it has my translator." — Andrew Zimmern
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“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other places, other lives, other souls.” – Anais Nin
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“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.” ― Jack Kerouac
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“The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine
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“That’s the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don’t want to know what people are talking about. I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.” — Bill Bryson
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“Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in 10 seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” – Ray Bradbury
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“People don’t take trips, trips take people.” – John Steinbeck
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"Traveling is how we don't get stale. It keeps me creative and constantly feeds my inspiration." — Jean-Georges Vongerichten
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“Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.” — Paulo Coelho
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“Nothing unexpected or wonderful is likely to happen if you have an itinerary in Paris filled with the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower.” — Anthony Bourdain
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“Two roads diverged in a wood and I—I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost
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“Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life—and travel—leaves marks on you.” — Anthony Bourdain
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“I have found out there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.” — Mark Twain
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"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life." ― Jack Kerouac
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“Travel can be anywhere, it’s not measured in miles.” — Samantha Brown
- "When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world." — Mary Oliver
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“Go someplace on a hunch. Off the beaten path. Someplace you don’t know a ton about. And if you’re really lucky, you might end up in Lisbon.” — Phil Rosenthal
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“I think you need to see a place for what it is, not what you project onto it. Let the place breathe a little, you may enjoy it more.” — Samantha Brown
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“Traveling is more fun—hell, life is more fun—if you can treat it as a series of impulses.” — Bill Bryson
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“Take a chance. It’s the best way to test yourself.” — Richard Branson
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“Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what's right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.” — Andrew Zimmern
