If you’re looking for some words of affirmation to add fuel to your love of travel, then you’ll find these inspiring travel quotes will do just that.
The following quotes about travel have helped us stay inspired to follow our travel dreams after 25+ years of full time travel, and many of them we have printed and displayed around the house, or have been used as Instagram captions.
These quotes were chosen as they connect us to why travel is important.
Our personal travel quote is “it’s all about the memories!”
That one has come in handy when we’ve broken down and forgotten why we left home in the first place.
But if you need more inspiration, these are our favorite travel quotes to inspire you to travel more and create better memories.
Inspirational Travel Quotes
“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.”
James Michener
“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
Lao Tzu
“Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
Gustave Flaubert
“Traveling 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, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.”
Cesare Pavese
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
Andre Gide
“Travel leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”
IBN Battuta
“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.”
Paul Theroux
“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.“
Anatole France
“Take only memories. Leave only footprints.”
Chief Seattle
“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
Martin Buber
“Travel makes a wise man better but a fool worse.”
Thomas Fuller
“No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.”
Lin Yutang
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“The more I travelled, the more I realized fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.”
Shirley MacLaine
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world.”
Freya Stark
“The hand of friendship has no color.”
Unknown
“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.”
Miriam Beard
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
Neale Donald Walsch
“The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust
“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”
Mary Anne Radmacher
“There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.”
Charles Dudley Warner
“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“The gladdest moment in human life, me thinks, is a departure into unknown lands.”
Sir Richard Burton
“Apparently, there is nothing that cannot happen today.”
Mark Twain
“Live life with no excuses, travel with no regret.”
Oscar Wilde
“Travel teaches tolerance.”
Benjamin Disraeli
“A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.”
Moslih Eddin Saadi
“I love the feeling of being anonymous in a city I’ve never been before.”
Bill Bryson
“A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.”
Tim Cahill
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.”
Henry Miller
“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
“Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.”
Lawrence Block
“To travel is to discover everyone is wrong about other countries
Aldous Huxley
“We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.”
Hilaire Belloc
“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
“Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you’ve traveled.”
The Prophet Mohammed
“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
“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.”
Paulo Coelho
“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
“Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.”
Roy M. Goodman
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”
Oprah Winfrey
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
Helen Keller
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Lao Tzu
“Do not follow where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.”
Freya Stark
“Jobs fill your pocket. Adventures fill your soul.”
Unknown
“The world is a book and those who don’t travel read only a page.”
St Augustine
“20 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
“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do – especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”
William Least Heat Moon
“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
Jawaharial Nehru
“I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”
Mark Twain
“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.”
Bill Bryson
“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.”
Seneca
Final Thoughts
I have created a life of travel for 25+ years – no matter my life stage.
We travel to stay in alignment with our values, which are love, joy, connection, growth, contribution and freedom. So these are the memories we’re seeking – any experience that creates these feelings within us.
That is the sign of a happy and fulfilled life.
We have also created a thriving online travel business that helps us travel wherever and whenever we want, and we’ve been successful with it now for 10 years.
Here is my keynote explaining the three principles I follow to help me create anything!
More Inspirational Posts
- Mixed bag of emotions about life after travel
- You’ve got time + the end of a 22 year nomadic life
- Thoughts on the end of our 18 month Australian road trip
- Reasons why travel helps you live a good life
- Dealing with reverse culture shock
- Ways travel can uncover who you really are
- How to achieve your goals and change your life for good
- Ways to unplug from the chaos and plug back into life
- Travel Tips for First Time Travelers
What are your favorite travel quotes?
I actually like the one attributed to Mark Twain. He didn’t really say it and it isn’t as much about travel as it is a destination. However, I can say from experience it is very true:
“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”
Jeremy,
Yeah, it was attributed to him everywhere I looked online, and I like it too so added it in!
I like these a lot! Thank you. I may re-quote one or two occasionally if that’s okay with you. 🙂
Sure thing Sally!
“You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own and you know what you know and only YOU will decide where to go!”
Oh! The places you will go!
-Dr. Seuss
Hey Tony, Love Dr Seuss quotes, cheers!
I love this!! Some of my all time favorite quotes. Whenever I am in a new city, I always think of the Proust quote and try and note the time that my mindset shifts from seeing new things, to seeing them with new eyes. Really enjoyed reading this man!
Happy to hear that Nate, cheers 🙂
I recently did a similar post, by favourite at the moment is: “Travel makes one modest, you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert
Loooove this!!!!!! Happy Holidays & cheers to more travels in 2013.
You too beautiful!
Love this quote
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories”
Thank you for sharing Mark. Great quote
Love all of them! I have been making my own lately as sometimes there are no words already spoken to express MY feelings. My facebook page and twitter—@TTs Trippin and my Pinterest board “Travel Inspiration/Quotes” has some of the ones I have made using my own pics and words. A couple (words only) “Traveling is like breathing for me, it sustains my life”, “While a vacation is meant for relaxing, traveling is energizing”, “I don’t want to have anything, I want to SEE everything”, “I don’t travel alone to get away from anyone, I travel alone to get closer to me”. You can see them with my pics on my Facebook page 🙂 THANKS for sharing these and ALL your fabulous information!
I love the Helen Keller one. It always reminds me and gives me comfort that if I don’t ever take risks in life, than it’s not much of a life to live.
Agree Samantha, so empowering!
How about this one: If you want to travel with friends, go to your destination and you will find them there.
I found these on Pinterest! I absolutely love them and gets me excited for my next adventure to South East Asia! if you have any travel tips for me, I’d greatly appreciate it!!! Cheers!
STart on this page Nicole https://www.ytravelblog.com/start-here/
Many of our best tips are here. You can use the search bar to look for anything specific and our travel ebook has all our tips and strategies for free travel
“take only memories, leave only footprints” this is the best quote ever!
Life is all about memories and people. Do not worry about gifts and shopping like a crazy 😛