120 Best Explore Quotes and Inspiring Quotes about Exploration 2024 - The Wanderlust Within (2024)

Exploring is all about getting out of your comfort zone, venturing into the unknown, sampling new things and discovering foreign lands.

So if you’re looking for inspiration to bring out the explorer in you, check out this bumper list of quotes about exploration that are guaranteed to spark your wanderlust and motivate you to plan your next adventure!

120 Quotes about Exploration

Below I’ve collated the largest list of quotes about exploring the unknown on the internet and categorised them to make it easier for you.

However if you want to keep them handy, bookmark this page, or save the post to Pinterest at the bottom of this post.

Short Explore Quotes for Instagram

These short one liner quotes about discovery and exploration are perfect for social media statuses or Instagram captions.

They can also be printed on T-shirts or mugs as they are so succinct.

1. “Not all those who wander are lost.”– J.R.R. Tolkien

2. “Never lose your sense of wonder.” – Unknown

3. “To travel is to live” – Hans Christian Andersen

4. “Explore the unseen” – Unknown

Lets Explore Quotes and Life Explorer Quotes

5. “Never stop exploring.” – Unknown

6. “Oh, the places you’ll go!” – Dr.Seuss

7. “The journey not the arrival matters.” – T. S. Eliot

8. “Don’t listen to what they say. Go see.”- Unknown

9. “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” ―David Mitchell

Short Quotes on Exploring

10. “It’s a big world out there, go explore.” – Unknown

11. “I’m not lost. I’m exploring.” – Jana Stanfield

12. “Go outside and explore.” – Unknown

13. “Life is short and the world is wide” – Unknown

14. “Exploration is curiosityput into action.” – Don Walsh

See Also

50 Explore Quotes [to fuel your inner wanderlust] — Walk My World15 Ways to Find Your Purpose of Life & Realize Your Meaning5 Ways to Explore the World and Feel Excited About Life - Tiny BuddhaThe 50 Best Explore Quotes To Inspire Your Next Adventure (2021)

Quotes about Adventure and Exploration

15. “I do not explain, I explore.” – Marshal McLuhan

16. “The world is yours to explore.” – Unknown

17. “Not all classroomshave four walls.” – Unknown

18. “Explore, dream and explore.” – Unknown

19. “Dare to live the life you’ve always wanted.” – Unknown

Famous Quotes about Exploring

20. “If we were meant to stay in one place we’d have roots instead of feet.” – Rachel Wolchin

21. “Of all the books in the world, the best stories are found between the pages of a passport.” — Unknown

22. “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer”- Unknown

23. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”– St Augustine

24. “We travel not to escape life,but for life not to escape us.”– Unknown

25. “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” –Susan Sontag

Discovering New Places Quotes

26. “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T. S. Eliot

27. “Once a year,go someplace you’ve never beenbefore.” – Dalai Lama

28. “Investment in travelisinvestment in yourself.”– Matthew Karsten

29. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail”– Ralph Waldo Emerson

30. “A ship in harbor is safe,but that is not what ships are builtfor”– John A. Shedd

31. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”– Gustav Flaubert

Explore Captions for Instagram

32. “Adventure may hurt you but monotony will ki*l you.” – Unknown

33. “Live your life by a compass, not a clock.”– Stephen Covey

34. “The journey of a thousand miles beginswithone step.” – Lao Tzu

35. “Live life with no excuses,travel with noregret” – Oscar Wilde

36. “So much of who we are is where we have been.”– William Langewiesche

37. “Jobs fill your pocket,but adventures fill your soul.” – Jaime Lyn Beatty

38. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”– Helen Keller

Quotes about Exploring New Places

39. “Travel is never a matter of money but of courage.”– Paolo Coelho

40. “The goal is to die with memories not dreams” – Unknown

41. “Be fearless in the pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.”– Jennifer Lee

42. “There’s no way we were born to just pay bills and die” – Unknown

43. “Blessed are the curious for they will have adventures.” – Unknown

44. “We wander for distraction,but we travel for fulfilment”– Hilaire Belloc

45. “Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.” – Frank Borman

Inspirational Exploring Quotes

46. “Thelife you have led doesn’t needto be theonly life you have”– Anna Quindlen

47. “Exploration is a wonderful way to open our eyes to the world, and totruly see that impossible is just a word.” – Richard Branson

48. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore”– Andre Gide

49. “The purpose of life is to live it, to taste it, to experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

50. “Seize the day boys, make your life extraordinary” –John Keating

51. “Man can learn nothing except by going from the known to the unknown.” – Claude Bernard

Explore the Unseen Quotes

52. “Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times” – Unknown

53. “Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.” – E. L. Doctorow

54. “A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.” – Roman Payne

55. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that mountain.”― Jack Kerouac

56. “You can shake the sand from your shoes, but it will never leave your soul.” – Unknown

57. “The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Unknown

Exploration Quotes to Motivate You

58. “Until you cross the bridge of your insecurities, you can’t begin to explore your possibilities.” – Tim Fargo

59. “Go, fly, roam, travel, voyage, explore, journey, discover, adventure.” – Unknown

60. “When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back; the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.” – Rebecca Solnit

61. “In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.” – Ansel Adams

Get Out and Explore Quotes

62. “We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” – Henry David Thoreau

63. “Let those who wish have their respectability- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the furthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic.” – Richard Halliburton

64. “Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before. How can there be any adventure, any exploration, if you let somebody else – above all, a travel bureau – arrange everything before-hand?” – Richard Aldington

65. “I have worn the dust of many foreign streets, but to brush it off would surely be silly. I have the memories of many foreign adventures, but to forget them, would surely be a sin. So, breath in the dust, and keep the memories in.”– Rowland Waring-Flood

Quotes on Exploration and Curiosity

The below are famous explorer quotes are summed up by some of the most curious minds out there.

66. “Exploring is an innate part of being human. We’re all explorers when we’re born. Unfortunately, it seems to get drummed out of many of us as we get older, but it’s there, I think, in all of us. And for me that moment of discovery is just so thrilling, on any level, that I think anybody that’s experienced it is pretty quickly into it.” – Edith Widder

67. “Oncethetravel bug bites thereisno known antidote, and Iknowthat Ishallbehappily infected untiltheendofmy life.” – Michael Palin

68. “The gladdest moment in human life is a departure into unknown lands.”– Sir Richard Burton

69. “You can accelerate your development by giving yourself a fresh set of challenges, or the same set viewed from a different angle, every day. Explore a different path – if it leads nowhere, explore another.” – Paul Foxton

Born to Explore Quotes

70. “It is a big and beautiful world. Most of us live and die in the same corner where we were born and never get to see any of it. I don’t want to be most of us.” – Oberyn Martell,Game of Thrones

71. “We were meant to explore this earth like children do, unhindered by fear, propelled by curiosity and a sense of discovery. Allow yourself to see the world through new eyes and know there are amazing adventures here for you.” – Laurel Bleadon Maffei

72. “Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.”– Lawrence Block

73. “It’s important for the explorer to be willing to be led astray.” – Roger von Oech

74. “This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.” – John Steinbeck

75. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

Life Quotes for Exploring

76. “Fill your lifewith experiences,not things.Have storiestotell,not stufftoshow.” – Unknown

77. “Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.”– Roy M. Goodman

78. “Life is an experiment in which you may fail or succeed. Explore more, expect least.” – Santosh Kalvar

79. “Stuff your eyeswithwonder,he said,liveasif you’d disappearinten seconds.Seetheworld.It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for infactories” – RayBradbury

80. “We were born to be free, to expand our horizons by going where we have never gone before, and not to hang out in the relative comfort and safety of the nest, the known. There is a place within us that is courageous beyond our human understanding; it yearns to explore beyond the boundaries of our daily life” – Dennis Merritt Jones

Explore and Discover Quotes

81. “Life should notbe ajourneyto thegravewith the intention of arriving safelyin aprettyandwell preserved body,but rather to skid inbroadsidein acloudofsmoke,thoroughly used up,totally worn out, andloudly proclaiming“Wow! What a Ride!” ―Hunter S. Thompson

82. “A life lived every day doing only what needs to be done may seem convenient but your heart and soul don’t live for convenience they live for exploration, imagination and the pursuit of dreams. Do what must be done but also do what your heart and soul want to be done.” – Avina Celeste

83. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”― Mark Twain

Explore the World Quotes

84. “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” –Ibn Battuta

85. “With the right mindset and spirit, only the sky’s the limit” – Unknown

86. “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”– Anaïs Nin

87. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber

88. “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

89. “You must go on adventures to find out where you truly belong” – Sue Fitzmaurice

BestExplore Quote

90. “Life is about the gray areas. Things are seldom black and white, even when we wish they were and think they should be, and I like exploring this nuanced terrain.” – Emily Giffin

91. “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” – Anatole France

92. “Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

93. “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

94. “My greatest fear is not living my life.” – Ed Stafford

95. “I will go anywhere, as long as it is forward.” – David Livingstone

Exploring Captions

96. “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

97. “I will come again and conquer you because as a mountain you can’t grow… but as a human, I can.” – Edmund Hillary

98. “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot

99. “Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” –Alan Keightley

100. “Every man can transform the world from one of monotony and drabness to one of excitement and adventure.”– Irving Wallace

Never Stop Exploring Quotes

101. “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T. S. Eliot

102. “I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go.” – James Cook

103. “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin

104. “We have to establish our credentials as an explorocracy; so to survive and rule ourselves, we have to explore.” – China Mieville

105. “All you need to know is that it’s possible.” – Wolf

Exploring Quotes for Instagram

106. “Great things have small beginnings.” – Francis Drake

107. “My only fear is that I might awaken in my bed, destined to live a common life once again.” – Marco Polo

108. “Do just once what others say you can’t do, and you will never pay attention to their limitations again.” – James Cook

109. “What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.” – Roman Payne

110. “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” – T.S. Eliot

Keep Exploring Quotes

111. There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign. –RobertLouisStevenson

112. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we hadlongerwaysto go. But no matter, the road is life.” –Jack Kerouac

113. “Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” –PaulTheroux

114. No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. –LinYutang

115. “Travelling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” –CesarePavese

Best Explore Caption

116. “The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.” – Rudyard Kipling

117. “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

118. “To awaken alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown.” – Freya Stark

119. “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

That’s 120 Quotes about Exploration

That’s the end of my bumper list, so I hope you’ve managed to find the perfect quote on exploration.

I’d love to know which one is your favourite, and if I’ve missed any great quotes about exploring then please let me know in the comments below.

Love motivational quotes and captions?

Check out these travel quotes to inspire you to book your next adventure.

• Sunset Captions for Instagram
• Beach Quotes
• Best Ocean Quotes and Captions
• Summer Captions
• Sunrise Captions for Instagram
• Outdoor Quotes
• Hiking Quotes
• Best Nature Quotes
• Best John Muir Quotes
• Best National Park Captions for Instagram
• Mountain Quotes
• Road Trip Quotes
• Waterfall Quotes
• London Quotes
• Solo Travel Quotes
• Travel with Friends Quotes
• Funny Travel Quotes
• Miami Quotes
• Quotes for California
• Arizona Quotes
• If you prefer visuals check out my Pinterest board dedicated to Quotes and Captions.

Save Quotes on Explore to Pinterest for Later