Quotes by Thor Heyerdahl

Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian adventurer and ethnographer with a background in zoology, botany, and geography. He became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947, in which he sailed 8,000 km (5,000 mi) across the Pacific Ocean in a hand-built raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands. The expedition was designed to demonstrate that ancient people could have made long sea voyages, creating contacts between separate cultures. Heyerdahl also proposed that Azerbaijan was the site of an ancient advanced civilization. He believed that natives migrated north through waterways to present-day Scandinavia. He was appointed a government scholar in 1984.

Quotes:

Borders? I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.

Some people believe in fate, others don’t. I do, and I don’t. It may seem at times as if invisible fingers move us about like puppets on strings. But for sure, we are not born to be dragged along. We can grab the strings ourselves and adjust our course at every crossroad, or take off at any little trail into the unknown.

Agreement and acceptance rarely stimulate experiments and progress.

Pearls rarely turn up in oysters served to you on a plate; you have to dive for them.

Then we heard, rather faintly, in the receiver: “If all’s well, why worry?"

In my experience, it is rarer to find a really happy person in a circle of millionaires than among vagabonds.

One learns more from listening than speaking. And both the wind and the people who continue to live close to nature still have much to tell us which we cannot hear within university walls.

It is also rarer to find happiness in a man surrounded by the miracles of technology than among people living in the desert of the jungle and who by the standards set by our society would be considered destitute and out of touch.

Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others.

It says in the Bible, in plain words, that God made a self-portrait. He created man in His own image - man and woman - for God is Love. Why should we start thinking of a god up in the clouds with wings, if He dwells within us in the spirit of Love?!

A civilized nation can have no enemies, and one cannot draw a line across a map, a line that doesn't even exist in nature and say that the ugly enemy lives on the one side, and good friends live on the other.

I was in uniform for four years, and I know that heroism doesn't occur from taking orders, but rather from people who through their own willpower and strength are willing to sacrifice their lives for an idea.

I have never been able to grasp the meaning of time. I don't believe it exists. I've felt this again and again, when alone and out in nature. On such occasions, time does not exist. Nor does the future exist.