Quotes by Thor Heyerdahl

About 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. This was linked to a diffusionist model of cultural development. Heyerdahl subsequently made other voyages designed to demonstrate the possibility of contact between widely separated ancient people. He was appointed a government scholar in 1984.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Thor Heyerdahl

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.

Thor Heyerdahl

Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Dj...

Thor Heyerdahl

Therefore, I feel convinced that any political picture can be changed to suit the needs of the powers that be.

Thor Heyerdahl

We have always been taught that navigation is the result of civilization, but modern archeology has demonstrated very clearly that this is not so.

Thor Heyerdahl

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

Thor Heyerdahl

Otherwise he was glad we had missed our landing, for he still had three books to read.

Thor Heyerdahl

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

Thor Heyerdahl

But if we begin thinking about the world being over 100 million years old, then it's absolutely by chance that you and I are sitting here alive today, while all the others are dead or have never been born.

Thor Heyerdahl

Civilization grew in the beginning from the minute that we had communication - particularly communication by sea that enabled people to get inspiration and ideas from each other and to exchange basic raw materials.

Thor Heyerdahl

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.

Thor Heyerdahl

Those who have experienced the most, have suffered so much that they have ceased to hate. Hate is more for those with a slightly guilty conscience, and who by chewing on old hate in times of peace wish to demonstrate how great they were during the wa...

Thor Heyerdahl

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.

Thor Heyerdahl

For every minute, the future is becoming the past.

Thor Heyerdahl

I also believe that when one dies, one may wake up to the reality that proves that time does not exist.

Thor Heyerdahl

We must wake up to the insane reality of our time. We are all irresponsible, unless we demand from the responsible decision makers that modern armaments must no longer be made available to people whose former battle axes and swords our ancestors cond...

Thor Heyerdahl

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.

Thor Heyerdahl

In fighting nature, man can win every battle except the last. If he should win that too, he will perish, like an embryo cutting its own umbilical cord.

Thor Heyerdahl

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.

Thor Heyerdahl

Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others. I realized this from the start during World War II.

Thor Heyerdahl

Author Bio

  • NameThor Heyerdahl
  • DescriptionNorwegian anthropologist and adventurer
  • BornOctober 6, 1914
  • DiedApril 18, 2002
  • CountryNorway
  • ProfessionExplorer; Anthropologist; Archaeologist; Historian
  • AwardsFridtjof Nansen Award For Outstanding Research, Historical-philosophical Class; ; Peer Gynt Literary Award; ; Order Of St. Olav