Ernest Shackleton Quotations

Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.

The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below.

After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.

If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard.

I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave.

Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last... to the North Pole.

We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man.

Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results.

I do not intend to sacrifice the scientific utility of the expedition to a mere record-breaking journey, but say frankly, all the same, that one of my great efforts will be to reach the southern geographical Pole.

From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great Polar journey that can be made.

One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.

I do not know what 'moss' stands for in the proverb , but if it stood for useful knowledge... I gathered more moss by rolling than I ever did at school.

Teachers should be very careful not to spoil their pupils' taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition.

I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion.

After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeying - the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea

No person who has not spent a period of his life in those 'stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole' will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man

Optimism is the true moral courage

A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground.

(Was he talking about a polar expedition, or marriage?) -Jorge Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.

When things are easy, I hate it.

I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure.

Optimism is true moral courage.

Loneliness is the penalty of leadership, but the man who has to make the decisions is assisted greatly if he feels that there is no uncertainty in the minds of those who follow him, and that his orders will be carried out confidently and in the expectation of success.

By endurance we conquer.

Life to me is the greatest of all games. The danger lies in treating it as a trivial game, a game to be taken lightly, and a game in which the rules don't matter much. The rules matter a great deal. The game has to be played fairly or it is no game at all. And even to win the game is not the chief end. The chief end is to win it honorably and splendidly.

If you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you've got to keep going.

Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; Small Chance of Fame in Case of Success.

I chose life over death for myself and my friends... I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.