I’ve put together 101 of the best travel quotes as a reminder, motivation, and remembrance for the reasons why we travel.
I’m not just talking about the sightseeing and beach vacations. Travel is about the journey as much as the beautiful destination.
We learn about the world by experiencing new cultures and ways of living, in turn learning about ourselves.
I’ve been traveling the world for a few years – Will has been traveling for over 9 years – and the rest of the Broke Backpacker crew has put quite a dent in their passports too. I think these awesome quotes about traveling highlight some of the magnificent journeys and lessons we’ve experienced along the way.
Why? Because Travel quotes provide inspiration and capture truths about travel, adventure, and life.
Just like travel, words have the power to open our minds to completely new perspectives, which is why I hope this collection of quotes about travel and powerful words will inspire you to get out there and experience some adventurous travel yourself.
101 Best Travel Quotes
From funny travel quotes to inspiring words from legends past and present, here are the 101 best:
1. Travel makes you realize that no matter how much you know, there’s always more to learn.” – Nyssa P. Chopra, The Cultureur
2. We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” – Anonymous
This is one of my favorite quotes about traveling. A lot of people think that one travels to escape life, or that long-term travelers are running away from reality. The way I see it – sure – maybe vacations are a quick escape from the real world, but traveling is a way to embrace life’s grandest adventures. Traveling is a way for life not to escape us.
3. “Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.” – Marty Rubin
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4. “To the tourist, travel is a means to an end; to the traveler, it’s an end in itself.” – Marty Rubin
5. “To live is to travel, on a voyage more epic than the odysseys of myth – not from place to place, but through the poignant strangeness of time.” – T.L Rese
6. “Travel often; Getting lost will help you find yourself.” – Holstee Manifesto
Some of my best travel experiences were not necessarily butterflies and rainbows. Sometimes they were uncomfortable and painful. Sometimes I have quite literally gotten lost, but in the end, these experiences have helped me find myself.
I think that is what traveling is often about: finding – or at least rediscovering – aspects of yourself.
7. “Travel has a way of stretching the mind. The stretch comes not from travel’s immediate rewards, the inevitable myriad new sights, smells and sounds, but with experiencing firsthand how others do differently what we believed to be the right and only way.” – Ralph Crawshaw
8. “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” – George A. Moore
9. “Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.” – Drake
This is one of the most important travel quotes. Doesn’t matter how long you’re traveling for, you’ll see new cultures, open your mind and change your way of thinking – even if it’s just a little bit. Traveling shows us sides of the world but also about yourself that you’ve never seen before. Having a different view on things helped a lot of people when it comes to making hard decisions.
10. “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture are like a tree without roots.” – Marcus Garvey
11. Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things. -air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky. -all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese
I love this traveling the world quote from Cesare Pavese. Having been on the road for the last few years, he nailed my experience spot on. Nothing is certain – except air, sleep, the sea, the sky – but that is what traveling is about: embracing the unknown and trusting the process. The way I see it, the only thing for certain is what is happening in the now.
12. “Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” – Jawaharlal Nehru
13. “Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.” – Thomas Wolfe
14. “Traveling — it gives you home in a thousand strange places, then leaves you a stranger in your own land.” – Ibn Battuta
This is one of the most beautiful travel quotes. Meeting so many new people, making new friends and even finding a second family, has to be one of the best aspects of traveling. Having traveled quite a bit, I can say that having multiple homes is definitely an amazing feeling, although it can also create some distance between you and your original home.
15. “Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.” – Malcolm Bradbury
16. “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.”- Ibn Battuta
Probably one of the best travel quotes I’ve heard – the play on words, the sincerity, and the capture of what it means to travel. Traveling will undoubtedly leave you speechless, surprised, and lost for words, but those words will be found, and you will have epic stories to tell.
18. “To travel is to take a journey into yourself.” – Danny Kaye
19. “Every journey is personal. Every journey is spiritual. You can’t compare them, can’t replace, can’t repeat. You can bring back the memories but they only bring tears to your eyes.” – Diana Ambarsari
20. “The perfect journey is never finished, the goal is always just across the next river, round the shoulder of the next mountain. There is always one more track to follow, one more mirage to explore.” – Rosita Forbes
21. “Travel can also be the spirit of adventure somewhat tamed, for those who desire to do something they are a bit afraid of.” – Ella Maillart
22. “Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.” – Roy M. Goodman
I think this is one of my favorite quotes about travel. Having been to 30 or so countries, and plenty of destinations among them, one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that happiness does not come from beautiful destinations any more than the concept that money can buy happiness…
It’s easy to assume that if money can’t buy happiness, surely experiences can, but you can be in the most beautiful place on earth having some crazy experience, and not be happy. We tend to always be in search of the next big thing – the most beautiful beach or bigger mountain – without realizing that it is the journey there that matters, not the destination.
Happiness is hard to define of course, but I think happiness lies in your outlook and present state of mind. To be happy is to be in the present moment, no matter what you own or where you are.
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Get Yours Here Read Our Review23. “What gives value to travel is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we all have.” – Elizabeth Benedict
24. “We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.” – John Hope Franklin
25. “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Walking on the globe with your head down will never open up all views and beautiful things to see. In order to enjoy traveling, you have to keep your mind and heart open, accept different cultures and traditions and simply try to adapt. Keep a positive mindset and you’ll see the beauty of the world.
26. “Real traveling is not about visiting places but about ‘re-visiting’ our inner-self.” – Sorrab Singha
27. “Travel not to find yourself, but to remember who you’ve been all along.” – Unknown
Both of these travel quotes (#26 and #27) encapsulate that sometimes we travel to learn more about ourselves. A large aspect of traveling is, of course, visiting places, but sometimes you end up visiting parts of yourself too.
28. “Travelling expands the mind rarely.” – Hans Christian Andersen
29. “Traveling outgrows its motives. It soon proves sufficient in itself. You think you are making a trip, but soon it is making you – or unmaking you.” – Nicolas Bouvier
30. It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
31. “The best journeys are the ones that answer questions that at the outset you never even thought to ask.” – Rick Ridgeway
32. “You thought too hard. Same with travel. You can’t work too much at it, or it feels like work. You have to surrender yourself to the chaos. To the accidents.” – Gayle Forman
This is one of my favorite travel quotes! It reminds me of something I read in the book Shantaram, about an ex-convict on the run and his adventures in India. In the book, he was given similar advice: to surrender to India and accept his experience for what it was.
You have to surrender to the chaos and enjoy/endure the experiences as they come. While this is applicable to many aspects of life, it is definitely applicable to travel. You can’t try to force itineraries and plans or work hard to fulfill some high expectations in your mind. Doing so will only tire and disappoint you.
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Hide Yo’ Money!33. “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
34. “Travel has a way of making the world a much smaller place.” – Janna Graber
35. “Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.” – Oliver Goldsmith
36. “Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.” – Greg Anderson
37. “Travel can be one of the most rewarding forms of introspection.” – Lawrence Durrell
I can relate to this quote about travel quite well actually. The longer and more that I travel, the more I find myself self-analyzing and observing my own thought and emotional processes.
Traveling has a funny way of throwing you out into the world with the intention of discovering more about everything around you, only to realize you will discover far more about yourself. It is why traveling can be the most rewarding form of introspection.
38. “You develop a sympathy for all human beings when you travel a lot.” – Shakuntala Devi
39. “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.” – Pat Conroy
40. “Travel and change of place impart new vigour to the mind.” – Seneca
41. “A man practices the art of adventure when he breaks the chain of routine and renews his life through reading new books, traveling to new places, making new friends, taking up new hobbies and adopting new viewpoints.” – Wilfred Peterson
42. “It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.” – Ernest Hemingway
I can relate to these words quite a bit as I try to find the balance between preparing and planning for the future, reaching goals, and just enjoying the ride and staying present in the moment.
Having goals and an endpoint in sight is good; however, I don’t think it will be as satisfying if you don’t enjoy the moments that take you there. If you only focus on the destination you’ll miss everything that matters – the journey along the way.
43. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.” – Martin Buber
44. “Life is a magical journey, so travel endlessly to unfold its profound and heart touching beauty.” – Debasish Mridha
45. “Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.”- Izaak Walton
Whether it’s long, annoying bus trips, a shabby hostel or simply somewhere you don’t necessarily feel comfortable, it’s always better to have great company by your side. Going through the rough times together makes the whole experience more endurable.
46. “The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.” – Alain de Botton
47. “With age, comes wisdom. With travel, comes understanding.” – Sandra Lake
I love this quote about traveling. With age, comes wisdom. Wisdom isn’t something you can read about, it is something you learn through experience. The same goes for travel. You can read and hear about places and people that are different than you, but sometimes it takes experiencing those places and meeting those people for yourself to truly understand them.
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View on Osprey View on REI48. “Travel teaches toleration.” – Benjamin Disraeli
49. “Travel opens your mind as few other things do. It is its own form of hypnotism, and I am forever under its spell.” – Libya Bray
50. “Half of the fun of travel is the aesthetic of lostness.” – Ray Bradbury
51. “Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of the experience.” – Francis Bacon
52. “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain will always be remembered for his adventurous spirit and ability to share some of the most remote and fascinating corners of this planet with the rest of the world. His words ring true. Travel is not pretty, and it’s definitely not always comfortable.
Sometimes you’ll deal with awful buses and missed flights, sleep in strange places, be confronted with challenging and stressful situations, or encounter experiences that break your heart. But that’s okay because the journey will make you stronger, and ultimately make you a better person.
53. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustav Flaubert
54. “It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancholies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.” – Gustave Flaubert
55. “All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.” – Samuel Johnson
56. “Uncertainty and anticipation are the joys of travel.” – Ken Hundert
57. “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” – Dalai Lama
58. “Investment in travel is an investment in yourself.” – Matthew Karsten
Rather than investing in the latest technology, do yourself the favor and take yourself on a little trip. Clear your mind, learn new things and experience different cultures and people. You won’t regret it!
59. “Traveling carries with it the curse of being at home everywhere and yet nowhere, for wherever one is, some part of oneself remains on another continent.” – Margot Fonteyn
60. “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
61. “Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.” – Karl Kraus
62. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
63. “Travel expands the mind and fills the gap.” – Sheda Savage
There are so many things to see and learn. The more you know, the more open your mindset and view will be. If you feel like you’re missing someone, invest in yourself and go on a trip to experience new things – you won’t regret it, we promise!
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View on REI Read the Review64. “Traveling is almost like talking with men of other centuries.” – René Descartes
65. “If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.” – Cesare Pavese
66. “Of the gladdest moments in human life, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands.” – Richard Francis Burton
67. “Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.” – Pico Iyer
68. “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
69. “I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.” – Lillian Smith
70. “For my part, I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
71. “Conventional wisdom tells us… we take our baggage with us. I’m not so sure. Travel, at its best, transforms us in ways that aren’t always apparent until we’re back home. Sometimes we do leave our baggage behind, or, even better, it’s misrouted to Cleveland and is never heard from again.” – Eric Weiner
72. “The journey is part of the experience – an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.” – Anthony Bourdain
73. “Travel is like love, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.” – Pico Iyer
74. “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
75. “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
76. “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of every day, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark
77. “The true fruit of travel is perhaps the feeling of being nearly everywhere at home.” – Freya Stark
78. “You will, if you’re wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it.” – Freya Stark
79. “When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.” – Clifton Fadiman
This another one of the most important travel quotes, especially in nowadays time. When traveling, always keep your mind open, be respectful towards other people and try new things. Just because your believes, expectations and values work for you, doesn’t mean that it works for others too. Watch, experience and keep the critical thoughts to yourself if you don’t want to make enemies in a different country.
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80. “Travel empties out everything you’ve into the box called your life, all the things you accumulate to tell you who you are” – Claire Fontaine
81. “Travellers understand, instinctively and by experience, that travel and adventure change and elongate time, even while navigating the deadlines of airline and train departures.” – Paul Sheehan
82. “Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage.” – Paulo Coelho
83. “We travel because we need to because distance and difference are the secret tonic to creativity. When we get home, home is still the same. But something in our mind has been changed, and that changes everything.” – Jonah Lehrer
84. “Travel is a set of corrective lenses that helps focus the planet’s blurred reality.” – Andrew Solomon
85. “ I travel not to cross countries off a list, but to ignite passionate affairs with destinations.” – Nyssa P. Chopra, The Cultureur
86. “Travel is the best teacher. The only way to an open mind is by taking a plane out into the open world.” – C. JoyBell C.
87. “Travel far enough, you meet yourself.” – David Mitchell
88. He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” – Moorish proverb
89. “Travel is like an endless university. You never stop learning.” – Harvey Lloyd
Whether it’s about a new recipe, a new language or as simple as the fancy toilets in Japan, there’s ALWAYS something new and exciting for you to learn. That is the beauty of travel, just make sure you keep your mind open!
90. “The symbol of joy to-day is travel. There is a wanderlust that infects the blood.” – Rollin A. Sawyer
91. “To travel is to evolve.” – Pierre Bernardo
92. “Nothing develops intelligence like travel.” – Emile Zola
93. “The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home — and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.” – Rolf Potts
94. “There ain’t no journey what don’t change you some.” – David Mitchell
95. “Traveling is not something you’re good at. It’s something you do. Like breathing.” – Gayle Forman
96. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.” – Lin Yutang
97. “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” – George Moore
98. “All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell
99. “Living in another culture, not just visiting it, has reshaped our view of the world.” – Nancy Petralia
100. “Travel molds a man, people mold his wisdom and experiences mold his life!” – Sujit Lalwani
101. “Travelling, one accepts everything; indignation stays at home. One looks, one listens, one is roused to enthusiasm by the most dreadful things because they are new. Good travelers are heartless.” – Elias Canetti
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Hopefully, these adventure-inspiring quotes have given you some inspiration to explore the world we live in! Traveling has changed my life and given me some pretty irreplaceable life experience.
Remember, you don’t have to travel far to have wonderful adventures. Just keep an open mind and enjoy the ride! We hope you enjoyed this post!
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