50+ Inspirational Travel Quotes
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…to give you serious wanderlust.
Warning: Viewing of inspirational travel quotes while at work may lead to excessive bouts of wanderlust, a nagging desire to head to the airport with nothing but your passport and a toothbrush, and a stronger than normal desire to tell your boss to take this job and shove it.
Actually I did tell my boss to take this job and shove it right before heading to Asia with little more than a passport and a toothbrush, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you need a nudge in that direction, or just some motivation to start planning your summer vacation, read through this list of my personal favorite inspirational travel quotes.
And don’t forget to share your favorites so your friends and family can fuel their wanderlust, too.
Want even more inspiration? Check out these travel stories that will renew your faith in humanity.
Inspirational Travel Quotes for Solo Female Travelers
One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more. – Thomas Jefferson
Or she does. I know I certainly do. When you travel with other people, you tend to insulate yourselves together and focus on each other more than the world and the people around you. Personally, I feel far more engaged with a destination when I’m there alone, traveling at my own pace with only my own thoughts in my head.
Society tells you that you’re supposed to constantly crave the company of others. Don’t be afraid to admit that you love your own company, that you revel in it, that it brings you peace. – Leslie Price
There’s this weird phenomenon I’ve experienced where I’ll return from a glorious solo trip somewhere exotic and people will come out of the woodwork to say, “You went there ALONE? I would have gone with you! Girl, call me next time and I’ll go with you!”
Not to be rude, but who the **** asked you?
Sorry, this makes me cranky.
I don’t travel alone because I can’t find anyone to go with me- I travel alone because I love it. It’s my preference. It’s great. You should try it sometime.
I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone. – Daphne Du Maurier
Aren’t they, though?? When solo travel is in your blood, I think you just experience a much deeper connection with a place when you visit it by yourself. I’ve had some great experiences traveling places with certain other people, but I just don’t find myself falling in love with the destination the way I do when I’m solo.
As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world. – Virginia Woolf
I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others. -Amelia Earhart
I love to see a young girl go out and grab life by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass. – Maya Angelou
Doesn’t Maya Angelou have the best inspirational travel quotes? Or just life quotes, for that matter.
Uncategorized Travel Quotes
How much of your life will be lost forever by the time you decide to start living it? – Leslie Price
Is it weird to put your own entries in a roundup of inspirational travel quotes? I hope not, because I’m doing it. I first made this graphic years ago after a particularly frustrating bout of jealous sniping from acquaintances who claim to want to travel more than anything but say they just can’t afford it. Meanwhile, they spend the equivalent of a round trip plane ticket every month on streaming television services.
Do you want to live your life or sit on your couch and stare at a screen while watching other people live?
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. – Albert Camus
Some people might not consider this a travel quote at all, but it is to me. Another lifetime ago I was a teenage runaway, trying to survive while working the night shift at a Books-a-Million and living in my car. I desperately wanted to become a writer and travel the world, but how was I ever going to do that when I couldn’t even sort out a place to live?
One day at work I found a magnet in the bookstore cafe with this quote on it, and it was like a lightning bolt- I *had* to have it. It was $4.00 with my employee discount and to this day I consider it one of the best purchases I’ve ever made.
The magnet disappeared in a move at some point, but I kept the message. And 20+ years later, I’m a writer, traveling the world.
The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. – Amelia Earhart
Amelia was my first childhood hero- I imagined some pretty elaborate adventure scenarios while I was filling my bedroom with model planes and daydreaming about becoming a pilot. The pilot thing never happened, but I still get to spend plenty of time in the air. And she’s right- I spent years working up the nerve to go on my first big bucket list adventure. Once I booked that first flight, I was determined to fight through my anxieties and make it happen.
The rest, as they say, is history.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. – Lao Tzu
And that step is usually a lot less obvious than you think. If you want to save up money to take a year off work and travel the world, your first step isn’t to the airport when you decide to leave. Your first step is canceling cable TV and staring to pack your own lunch for work every day so you don’t waste money by eating out all the time. What single step could you be taking today to get you that much closer to your dream life?
Not all those who wander are lost. – J. R. R. Tolkien
Wandering is my favorite pastime. Wandering through foreign cities especially. Is there anything more delightful than wandering around a neighborhood where everything is new and unfamiliar and exciting, especially early in the morning when the light is all soft and the world is waking up and everything is magical? No. No, there is not. Spend more time wandering.
The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion. – Thomas Paine
Borders are arbitrary, we’re all family, and everyone deserves health and happiness no matter where they’re born. It’s not complicated.
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. – Saint Augustine
Possibly one of the most clichéd inspirational travel quotes ever? Maybe, but it’s true. The world is so big and I just don’t understand people who don’t have the desire to see more of it and experience all of the amazing things that it holds.
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. – Martin Buber
One of my favorite things about travel is that no matter how diligently (some might say obsessively) I research the destination and plan out my itinerary, there will always be something that takes me by surprise and ends up being one of the highlights of the trip.
In Athens, it was looking up at the floodlit Acropolis from Mars Hill when the clock struck midnight on my birthday and every church bell in the city started to chime in the darkness.
In Cuba, it was swimming under a waterfall to float in a cave full of bats like some kind of mermaid Indiana Jones.
In Myanmar, it was meeting an elderly monk so desperate for news from the outside world that he persuaded me to sit and talk with him for hours and then took me on a wild adventure through the city that ended with us being followed by government spies and then scandalizing the locals by fleeing in a taxi together.
Travel is wild, y’all.
Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit. – Frank Borman
The best education I have ever received was through travel. -Lisa Ling
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return. – Leonardo da Vinci (attributed)
There’s some discussion about whether or not Leo actually said this, but I like it, so I’m keeping it in my collection.
I hated flying for years- not because I was afraid, but because I got horrible motion sickness on every single flight. But even then, when I was stuck at home between travels, I would find myself drawn to passing airplanes, giving them the same look my dog gives my car when I have to go somewhere without here. “But… I want to go!”
I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list. – Susan Sontag
Same, girl. Same.
There is at least one entry on my bucket list from every single country in the world. I’ve checked over 100 things off the list so far and I have over 500 left to go- stick around to see if I make it.
Paris is always a good idea. – Audrey Hepburn
Trivia alert! “Paris” was my first word.
As a small child I taped pictures of the Eiffel Tower to my bedroom wall until I was old enough to buy a large framed poster print of it to replace them. My first ever trip out of the country was to France, and it was everything I ever dreamed of, and then some.
It has become super hip to hate on Paris in the last few years- the French are rude, Paris sucks, yada yada. Heck off with that negativity here- Paris will always be magical to me.
The ability to adapt is more important than the ability to plan. -Gary Arndt
I love planning trips almost as much as I love taking them, but despite my obsession with making sure everything goes smoothly, I’m a total disaster magnet. Sometimes my luggage randomly goes to Nairobi without me, an angry mama hippo charges my boat while sailing down the Nile, or I show up to a hotel in a tiny Greek village that actually closed a year before they accepted my reservation.
Shit happens.
If you want to travel the world, you have to be prepared for the most ridiculous problems to arise at the most inopportune times. It’s all part of the adventure.
See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. – Ray Bradbury
Right, remember what I said about deciding whether you want to live your life or sit around watching other people live theirs on TV? I know you get the National Geographic channel, but I promise you, nothing compares to seeing (and smelling and hearing and feeling and experiencing) the real thing.
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. – Helen Keller
A long time ago I decided I wanted my life to be a daring adventure- so I made it that way.
Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” – Jack Kerouac
Now that I’m pushing 40, I’m doing that thing that people my age do where I tell younger people about all the things I would go back and change if I could do it all over again.
In case you’re one of those younger people and you’re wondering what you should do with your life, I’ll tell you. I would spend exactly zero money and zero time on television, recreational shopping, fast food, getting married, and paying retail for anything. I would pour every single penny I could into traveling the world from the youngest age possible and I would figure out how to make money without a soul-destroying corporate job at the youngest age possible, and I would start climbing the goddamn mountains at least a decade earlier than I did.
Jobs fill your pocket, adventures fill your soul. – Jaime Lyn Beatty
And between the two, which is more important to you? Is that the one you spend the most time and energy on? Shouldn’t it be?
I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world. – Mary Anne Radmacher
I’m not, either. Extensive travel has a way of making you outgrow things- relationships, viewpoints, prejudices- the way nothing else does. It’s a bit like creating a marble sculpture of yourself, where each adventure chips away a little bit more at what shouldn’t be there.
You don’t have to be rich to travel well. – Eugene Fodor
I might want this put on my headstone one day. Despite the constant snarky “oh, look who won the lottery” comments every time I post another travel photo on Facebook, I’ve never been wealthy. I’ve been hardworking and determined and creative, but never wealthy.
If you’re one of those “I want to travel but I’m not rich” people, I’d urge you to go check out You are NOT Too Broke to Travel, Groupon Travel Deals, and Luxury Travel Savings You Won’t Believe and see if you can’t change that perspective.
Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life. -Robin Sharma
The first time I read this quote, I nearly fell out of my chair.
I grew up in a very poor, very unambitious family. When small baby Leslie told her family how she was going to travel the world one day, she was met with scorn and derision. Even anger. Ambition was for rich people. My wanting a life full of adventure and excitement and new experiences was seen as a betrayal. In their eyes, I should graduate high school, get a dead end job next to my mother and follow in her footsteps, slaving away in misery every day and going home to complain about my life every night while numbing the pain with one addiction after another.
No thanks.
Growing up, everyone I knew was living the same year 75 times and calling it a life. Day in and day out, they watched the same reruns on TV, ate the same five dinners every week, had the same arguments, made the same mundane comments about the same awful weather, wore the same clothes, and plodded along in comfortable misery.
There’s plenty of that life out there to go around if that’s what you’re looking for, but I knew I wasn’t having any of it. I knew from early childhood that I wanted something different. It’s in my DNA (and I was adopted, so clearly it wasn’t in theirs!)
I haven’t lived the same year twice in my entire adult life, and that fact fills me with so much gratitude.
As I write this, I’m looking out my living room windows at snow-covered mountains in the Pacific Northwest, where spring is finally starting to dig itself out of a long, snowy winter. Last year at this time, I was traveling across the country in a luxury RV, staying at a gorgeous resort in the Arizona desert where wild horses roamed around outside every morning at sunrise. Two years ago today I was in Nashville, listening to live music and drinking moonshine with my dog, my best adventure buddy, asleep at my feet. Four years ago I was in New Orleans. Five years ago, doing a 20 mile hike in Florida on a perfect spring day. Six years ago, watching the sun rise from the front of my beach house every morning. Seven years ago, eating my way through London’s Brick Lane. Ten years ago, flying in a hot air balloon over thousands of Burmese temples.
This is a life.
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
Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before- Dalai Lama
Or, you know, more than once a year. Maybe just sell everything you own and hit the road and go new places constantly. Whatever works for you.
In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take. – Lewis Carroll
If you can’t live longer, live deeper. – Italian proverb
I’m pretty confident that I’ve packed more life into my almost-40 years than most people would in a hundred, and I’m not done yet.
Don’t listen to what they say. Go see. – Chinese proverb
I like to travel to fairly exotic places. My first ever solo trip was to Myanmar when Aung San Suu Kyi was still under house arrest and the US State Department was warning American citizens not to travel there because of the political situation. Everyone I knew lost their minds telling me I was going to be kidnapped and murdered and they’d never see me again unless it was a beheading video on CNN.
Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen.
It was the most magical, life-changing trip imaginable and I came home with such a deep appreciation for the country and its people and culture.
“They” said similar things when I went to Uganda. And Rwanda. And Singapore. And Cuba. And Indonesia. And Greece. Every time you do something amazing, the naysayers come out of the woodwork with horrifying stories about things they saw on the news and grim predictions about how you’ll be coming home in a box.
Pessimists never accomplish anything. Ignore those people, practice common sense safety habits, and go see for yourself.
I didn’t know where I was going until I got there. – Cheryl Strayed
Adventure can be an end in itself. Self-discovery is the secret ingredient. – Grace Lichtenstein
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
Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world. – Gustave Flaubert
You are never too old to set a new goal or to dream a new dream. – C. S. Lewis
If you spend any amount of time on Instagram, you might think that everyone who quits their job to travel the world is a 22 year old goddess with a large collection of floppy hats. When you’re old enough to be the mother of one of those extremely photogenic darlings, it’s easy to feel like you’re past your prime and that you missed your chance.
Except that’s utter bullshit.
I do wish I had started traveling at a younger age, but I’m far from past my prime. Who cares how old you are? If you want to do a thing, go do it. I might be 80 by the time I finish checking the next 100 things off my bucket list, but so what? I’ll be 80 anyway- I might as well do a lot of dope shit in the meantime.
Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living. – Jonathan Safran Foer
When you’re the kind of person who was born knowing they need to travel the world, it’s exhausting to try to live a “normal” life. Getting up at the crack of dawn every day, putting on a suit- and pantyhose, too, what a nightmare- and going to a job where people treated me like shit all the time and I was expected to work limitless hours of unpaid overtime when I knew I should be trekking through the jungle and learning how to order a beer in Swahili? Absolutely exhausting. Like, the kind of exhausting you feel down in your bones.
To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries. – Aldous Huxley
Cuba is not a desolate communist shithole. The roads in Rwanda are better than many places in the US. A lot of countries do a lot of things better than we do in the United States and we’d be a lot better off if we learned from them instead of just constantly boasting about our superiority.
Inspirational Travel Quotes by Anthony Bourdain
Yes, he gets his own section. As a foul-mouthed traveling foodie myself, Anthony was god-like to me. If I had a dollar for every detailed and convoluted daydream I’ve ever had about running into Anthony at an Asian street market and then sitting down to swap travel stories over a beer… well, I could probably pay for some of the psychiatric help I obviously need. But all jokes aside, his death hit me like a ton of bricks and it still hurts to think about. It hurts a lot.
Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown. – Anthony Bourdain
Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life- and travel- leaves marks on you. -Anthony Bourdain
If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook, learn from them- wherever you go.” – Anthony Bourdain
Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. – Anthony Bourdain
Inspirational Travel Quotes for Couples
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love. – Ernest Hemingway
The quickest way for me to end a relationship is to go on a trip with someone and find out they’re not a good travel match for me. I might have thought I loved you until you started whining about having to walk everywhere and tried to get us to go to McDonald’s instead of eating the local cuisine.
Anyway there’s probably a reason the vast majority of my travel over the past 10+ years has been solo…
Anonymous Inspirational Travel Quotes
Inspirational travel quotes that don’t belong anywhere else, aren’t attributed to anyone in particular, and are hardly even quotes at all but I like them and this is my website so I do what I want.
Adventure may hurt you but monotony will kill you.
When in doubt, travel.
Just go.
Adventure awaits.
Let the adventure begin.
Wander.
So there you go- my personal favorite list of inspirational travel quotes. Do you have a serious case of wanderlust yet? I know, me too.
What are your favorite inspirational travel quotes? Let me know in the comments!