“Years later, another member [of the Royal Geographical Society] conceded, "Explorers are not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society. Indeed, some might say that explorers become explorers precisely because they have a streak of unsociability and a need to remove themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow men.”

“An unexamined idea, to paraphrase Socrates, is not worth having and a society whose ideas are never explored for possible error may eventually find its foundations insecure.”

“Exploration of space is worth it because humans need to explore. Knowledge is always good, and it's a really cool thing to see.”

“We are, always, poets, exploring possibilities of meaning in a world which is also all the time exploring possibilities.”

“The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannot be explored.”

“The brown book I carry says there is nothing stranger than to explore a city wholly different from all those one knows, since to do so is to explore a second and unsuspected self. I have found a thing stranger: to explore such a city only after one has lived in it for some time without learning anything of it.”