Rick Steves Quotations

What little history we've got in this rugged little corner of ours, we want to treasure. In Europe, they don't bulldoze things thoughtlessly. They preserve them.

Travel is intensified living . . . and one of the last great sources of legal adventure.

We're enjoying a great deal of success in attracting film crews to York and we're working closely with the city council to make York the most film-friendly city in the UK.

Eastern Europe has been really trendy. Prague is the best-preserved city in the region ... and the best beer in Europe lands on your table there for 50 cents.

Despite the ease of ATMs, we still recommend bringing some of your funds in traveler's checks -- enough to get you through a few days in an emergency. They are quicker to replace than ATM cards if they are lost or stolen, and they're not prone to being demagnetized or gobbled up by a cranky machine,

It's the cheap alternative to the Italian Riviera.

It's important to go with the flow. If you go to a restaurant in Spain at 7 p.m., that's bad news. The staff is eating then.

It's wasteful to have a train pass just ticking away.

Smart consumers should know what all the options are.

I'm just a travel writer trying to get more horsepower, more amplification.

Buy travelers checks in U.S. dollars ... rather than in European currency. If you don't use them abroad, you can use them when you get home or cash them in at your bank without having to reconvert.

You can't explain India to people. I can explain Ireland, Norway, the Alps, but I can't explain India.

I believe, very strongly, that it is the responsible, adult, recreational, no apologies necessary, 'it just makes my music more fun,' recreational use of marijuana is a civil liberty.

If you don't like a place, maybe you don't know enough about it... Give a culture the benefit of your open mind.

Fear is for people who don’t get out very much.

Self-consciousness kills communication.

I've got an efficiency and a guerrilla approach ... plus a unique synergy where everything I do helps everything else because it's overlapping.

I have a New Year's tradition. I lay all my travel dreams on the table, sort them out, prioritize, and begin the process of turning those dreams into reality.

I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It's not just Americans, it's the big countries. It's the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don't find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they're just too small to think the world is their norm.

Like skiing with bent knees makes the moguls fun, you need to take risks, get out of your comfort zone, have a positive attitude, and enjoy the bumps in the road. I like to say that if things aren’t to your liking, change your liking.

By day, Venice is a city of museums and churches, packed with great art. Linger over lunch, trying to crack a crustacean with weird legs and antennae. At night, when the hordes of day-trippers have gone, another Venice appears. Dance across a floodlit square. Glide in a gondola through quiet canals while music echoes across the water. Pretend it's Carnevale time, don a mask - or just a fresh shirt - and become someone else for a night.

Even in challenging economic times, making sure that study abroad is part of our college students' education is a vital investment. If we want a new generation of leaders and innovators who can be effective in an ever more globalized world, sending our students overseas is not a luxury. It's a necessity.

Travel is intensified living … and one of the last great sources of legal adventure.

I believe if you’re going to bomb someone you should know them first. It should hurt when you kill someone.

I have used cannabis all over the world.

Travel challenges truths that we were raised thinking were self-evident and God-given. Leaving home, we learn other people find different truths to be self-evident. We realize that it just makes sense to give everyone a little wiggle room.

I travel around the world in a way that tries to open my mind and give me empathy and inspire me to come home and make this world a better place.

Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something is not to your liking, change your liking.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood, and age only matters if you're a cheese.

As a traveler, I've often found that the more a culture differs from my own, the more I am struck by its essential humanity.

Travel like Ghandi, with simple clothes, open eyes and an uncluttered mind.

Travel is rich with learning opportunities, and the ultimate sourvenir is a broader perspective.

A society has to make a choice: tolerate alternative lifestyles or build more prisons.

Ideally, travel broadens our perspectives personally, culturally, and politically. Suddenly, the palette with which we paint the story of our lives has more colors.

It seems that the most fearful people in our country are those who don't travel and are metaphorically barricaded in America. If we all stayed home and built more walls and fewer bridges between us and the rest of the world, eventually we would have something to actually be fearful of.

I shutter to think how many people are underexposed and lacking depth in this field.