Polar Exploration Quotes

“Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.”
― Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

“When I think of the causes for which people more commonly give up their lives-nationalism, religion, ethnicity-it seems to me that a thirty-five pound bag of rocks and the lost world it represents, is not such a bad thing to die for.”
― Anne Fadiman, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader

“Surely misfortune could scarcely have exceeded this last blow. We arrived within 11 miles of our old One Ton Camp with fuel for one last meal and food for two days. For four days we have been unable to leave the tent - the gale howling about us. We are weak, writing is difficult, but for my own sake I do not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships , help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past. We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last. But if we have been willing to give our lives to this enterprise, which is for the honor of our country, I appeal to our countrymen to see that those who depend on us are properly cared for.
Had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that those who are dependent on us are properly provided for.”
― Robert Falcon Scott, Last expedition Volume 2

“At this period, too, Leningraders resorted to their most desperate food substitutes, scraping dried glue from the underside of wallpaper and boiling up shoes and belts. (Tannery processes had changed, they discovered, since the days of Amundsen and Nansen, and the leather remained tough and inedible.)”
― Anna Reid, Leningrad: The Epic Siege of World War II, 1941-1944

“The winds have a force so terrific as to eclipse anything previously known in the world. We have found the kingdom of blizzards. We have come to an accursed land.”
― Lennard Bickel, Mawson's Will: The Greatest Polar Survival Story Ever Written

“Freuchen, der på opturen fungerede som fyrbøder sammen med Hagerup og Gundahl, kvæstede en dag to mellemhåndsben alvorligt, da en hel bunke tunge kulstykker væltede ned over hans hånd. Da Freuchen er en af dem, der sjældent lader en lejlighed gå fra sig til at komme galt af sted, faldt det ham naturligvis ikke ind at benytte den sædvanlige jernstang til at rage kullene ned med inde i boksene. Da vi bebrejdede ham det uforsigtige i at stikke hænderne ind gennem det farlige hul, sagde han: "Jamen, jeg havde da først stukket hovedet langt ind for at se, hvor jeg skulle ta' og rive løs.”
― Achton Friis, Danmark Ekspeditionen 1906-1908

“By 1854, when the search was called off, almost every corner of the Canadian archipelago below the 77th parallel had been traversed, drawn, and recorded on large maps carefully tipped into the papers. So fragile now they hardly bear touching, they are still in their spare precision beautiful and moving, the tangible result of the toes and fingers lost to frostbite, the starvation and profound exhaustion and sometimes the death of me dragging heavy sledges over rough ice or through deep snow, skirting the edge of human endurance.”
― Anthony Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage

“Next morning, when I got up, the inside temperature was 30° below zero. The new arrangement was working quite nicely indeed.”
― Richard Evelyn Byrd, Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure