Everybody needs a pick-me-up every once in a while. That’s why I put together a list of best adventure quotes that will inspire you to take action, fulfill your dreams and accomplish the challenges you set.

This list is growing every year because there are more and more adventure quotes that I discover which inspire me. Whether it was during trekking in Patagonia, trying mountaineering in Peru or running a popular Routeburn Track in New Zealand, sometimes I just needed a little push. I truly live adventurously because I think that’s the most fun and by expanding my limits my confidence and stamina grow as well.

For those who turn this inspiration into research, essays, or academic projects, organizing sources can take extra time, which is why some people choose help to do my annotated bibliography for me while focusing on the main ideas.

Find your favourite adventure quote below. The one that resonates with you the most. Make it a background on your phone, print it and carry it in your wallet or tape it next to your nightstand. But most importantly, live by it!

The ultimate list of adventure quotes is divided into several sections so it’s easier to read through:

• my favourite adventure quotes
• nature adventure quotes
• adventure quotes by modern adventurists
• quotes about adventure and travel
• short adventure quotes
• adventure quotes for Instagram
• bonus new adventure quote

I shared them on our Instagram stories as a part of #motivationmonday and to my pleasant surprise, they were very popular.

Let’s start with my favourite adventure quotes. The firsts one is the motto I live by and the second one used to be taped to the wall in my bedroom.

101 Adventure quotes for inspiration

My favourite adventure quotes

1.“If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.”
– Seth Godin

My all-time favourite adventure quote! There’s no better way to expand your limits than pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. A lot of things in my life that scared me, and that’s when I started a monologue in my head analyzing what was I actually scared of. What’s the worst thing that could happen? Every situation I can think of where I pushed myself, I ended up being proud of myself. Try it! Don’t overthink it and just jump.

2. “Wake up with a plan of action, go to bed with satisfaction.”
– Greg Plitt

I found this quote in a fitness magazine and used to look at it every single day so I don’t have an excuse, not to workout. What I love about it is that it’s applicable to life in general. Once you make a plan and commit to sticking to it, you can sleep soundly knowing you’re giving your best.

3. “Do what makes you feel amazing.”
– Tara Stiles

What makes you feel amazing? And are you doing enough of it? My favourite yoga guide Tara Stiles shares her approach of doing things that make you feel alive and inspire people worldwide.

4. “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.”
– Maya Angelou

This couldn’t be more true! Great people never accomplished great things by following the crowd, but by doing (what many thought) crazy things. Next time you drive by a waterfall, pull over, get out of your car, and go stand right underneath the waterfall. Your body will be buzzing from the excitement, believe me. It’s just one example of a crazy thing we’ve done in the past and it felt glorious!

5. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
– Neale Donald Walsch

Although this adventure quote might sound cliche and a bit overused, it’s one thing that all adventurous people agree on. You’ll never grow if you only do the familiar. Try jumping out of your circle and see what happens.

Nature adventure quotes

6. “Real freedom lies in wilderness, not in civilization.”
– Charles Lindbergh

7. “The outside is the only place we can truly be inside the world.”
– Daniel J. Rice

8. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”
– William Shakespeare

9. “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons: It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”
– Walt Whitman

10. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

11. “It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
– Sir Edmund Hillary

12. “A river cuts through the rock not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
– Jim Watkins

13. “All good things are wild and free.”
– Henry David Thoreau

14. “You are not in the mountains. Mountains are in you.”
– John Muir

15. “Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

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16. “Great things are done when men and mountains meet. This is not done by jostling in the street.”
– William Blake

17. “The wilderness holds answers to questions man has not yet learned to ask.”
– Nancy Wynne Newhall

18. “Over every mountain, there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.”
– Theodore Roethke

19. “In the wilderness is the salvation of the world.”
– Henry David Thoreau

20. “Forget not that the Earth delights to feel your bare feet and winds long to play with your hair.”
– Kahli Gibran

21. “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.”
– Edward Abbey

22. “If you wish to know the divine, feel the wind on your face and the warm sun on your hand.”
– Eido Tai Shimano Roshi

23. “Everything you can imagine, nature has already created.”
– Albert Einstein

Adventure quotes by modern adventurists

24. “The word adventure has gotten overused. To me, adventure is when everything goes wrong. That’s when adventure starts.”
– Yvon Chouinard

Yvon Chouinard is the founder of Patagonia, a climber, an environmentalist, and an all-around adventurist. Any documentary you will watch about his life is inspiring. I loved following his journey in 180 Degrees South.

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25. “Adventure should be 80% ‘I think this is manageable,’ but it’s good to have that last 20% where you’re right outside your comfort zone. Still safe, but outside your comfort zone.”
– Bear Grylls

An amazing adventure quote from my favourite adventurer Bear Grylls. His TV show Running Wild about survival skills is thrilling and makes you want to get out there. His book taught me a lot about surviving in nature and making use of everything that’s around you.

26. “People have accused me of climbing mountains to prove what a big man I am. This is not true. I go into the mountains to show myself just how small, and insignificant I am.”
– Reinhold Messner

Reinhold Messner is an Italian mountaineer. He was the first to ascend Mount Everest and the first to summit all 14 mountain peaks over 8,000 meters. His life revolves around adventure and he knows a thing or two about getting out of your comfort zone.

Quotes about adventure and travel

27. “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
– Andre Gide

28. “Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.”
– Eckhart Tolle

29. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
– Jack Kerouac

30. “Better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.”
– Asian Proverb

One of the best travel quotes out there! Have you seen a picture of something you’d like to see yourself in this lifetime? Penguins in the wild? Machu Picchu? Whatever it is, I highly recommend creating a vision board and starting to work towards your dream. Every small step you make each day counts towards something exciting, so why would you waste your life and not try to succeed?

31. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
– Mark Twain

32. “Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.”
– Jack Kerouac

33. “I travel because I’d rather look back at my life, saying ‘I can’t believe I did that’ instead of ‘if only I had’.”
– Florine Bos

34. “May your adventures bring you closer together, even as they take you far away from home.”
– Trenton Lee Stewart

35. “Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before.”
– Richard Aldington

36. “People don’t take trips, trips take people.”
– John Steinbeck

37. “A ship is safe in harbour, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
– John A. Shedd

38. “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
– Thomas Alva Edison

39. “Live your life by a compass, not a clock.”
– Stephen Covey

40. “We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”
– Irving Wallace

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41. “Climb mountains not so the world can see you but so you can see the world.”
– David McCullough Jr.

42. “If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet.”
– Rachel Wolchin

Short adventure quotes

43. “If you don’t take risks, you’ll have a wasted soul.”
– Drew Barrymore

44. “I hope there are days when you fall in love with being alive.”
– Anonymous

45. “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.”
– Michael Altshuler

46. “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
– Beverly Sills

47. “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
– Socrates

48. “Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.”
– Henry David Thoreau

49. “What is coming is better than what is gone.”
– Arabic Proverb

50. “Adventure is worthwile.”
– Aesop

51. “If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.”
– Bob Dylan

52. “Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.”
– Bob Bitchin

53. “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
– Confucius

54. “The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters.”
– Conrad Anker

55. “You must go on adventures to find out where you truly belong.”
– Sue Fitzmaurice

56. “You know you are truly alive when you’re living among lions.”
– Karen Blixen

57. “Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.”
– Erol Ozan

58. “Death is more universal than life, everyone dies but not everyone lives.”
– Alan Sachs

59. “Never fear quarrels, but seek hazardous adventures.”
– Alexandre Dumas

60. “You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

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61. “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
– Katharine Hepburn

62. “Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.”
– Michael Jordan

63. “If you’re tired starting over, stop giving up.”
– Shia LaBeouf

64. “Getting lost is not a waste of time.”
– Jack Johnson

65. “Don’t wait. Life goes faster than you think.”
– Sanyam Handa

66. “A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt

67. “How wild it was, to let it be.”
– Cheryl Strayed

68. “The danger of adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort.”
– Paulo Coelho

69. “Choose to do more than just exist, choose to live.”
– Steve Maraboli

70. “May you always do what you are afraid to do.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

71. “Spontaneity is the best kind of adventure.”
– Anonymous

72. “Adventure may hurt you, but monotony will kill you.”
– Marcus Purvis

73. “Adventure is the child of courage.”
– Jonathan Lockwood Huie

74. “Jobs fill your pockets, but adventures fill your soul.”
– Jamie Lyn Beatty

75. “The bold adventurer succeeds the best.”
– Ovid

76. “Nobody owns the world. So feel free to explore it.”
– E.A.Cabaltica

77. “Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”
– Confucius

Adventure quotes for Instagram

78. “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”
– T.S Eliot

79. “If you don’t challenge yourself, you will never realise what you can become.”
– Anonymous

80. “Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!”
– Friedrich Nietzsche

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81. “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
– Lao Tzu

82. “Until you step into the unknown, you don’t know what you’re made of.”
– Roy T. Bennett

83. “If happiness is the goal – and it should be, then adventures should be top priority.”
– Richard Branson

84. “You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get.”
– Michael Phelps

85. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.”
– Oprah Winfrey

86. “It doesn’t matter where you’re going, it’s who you have beside you.”
– Anonymous

87. “Human progress has always been driven by a sense of adventure and unconventional thinking.”
– Andre Geim

88. “The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”
– Walter Bagehot

89. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
– Paulo Coelho

90. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

91. “I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
– Michael Jordan

92. “Strength grows in the moments when you think you can’t go on but you keep going anyway.”
– Anonymous

93. “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.”
– Leonardo da Vinci

94. “Adventure is a path. Real adventure, self-determined, self-motivated, often risky, forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world.”
– Mark Jenkins

95. “Always there has been an adventure just around the corner, and the world is still full of corners.”
– Roy Chapman Andrews

96. “You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go, and see what happens.”
– Mandy Hale

97. “Adventure is allowing the unexpected to happen to you. Exploration is experiencing what you have not experienced before.”
– Richard Aldington

98. “I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”
– Rosalia de Castro

99. “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure.”
– Christopher McCandless

100. “Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life is meant to be.”
– Steve Pavlina

101. “Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.”
– Ernest Hemingway

Bonus adventure quote

102. “Everything in life is possible armed only with a determined approach and a positive mindset.”
– Nirmal Purja

The newest adventure quote is brought to you by mountain climber Nimsdai, the first man who summited 14 mountain peaks above 8,000m in just 6 months and holds 10x World Records! Check out the Netflix documentary 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible to see his amazing accomplishment.

Which one of these adventure quotes is your favourite? I hope it inspired your day and your next trip!

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