Apsley Cherry-Garrard Quotes

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.

Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say, 'What is the use?' For we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which will not promise him a financial return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal. If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a winter journey, give me Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen; and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.

And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore.

Exploration is the physical expression of the Intellectual Passion. And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore.... If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.

In Antarctica you get to know people so well that in comparison you do not seem to know the people in civilization at all.

The luxuries of civilization satisfy only those wants which they themselves create.

Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin.

We traveled for science: those three small embryos from Cape Crozier, that weight of fossils from Barkley Island, and that mass of material less spectacular but gathered just as carefully hour by hour, in wind and drift, darkness and cold, was striven for in order that the world may have a little more knowledge, that it may build on what it knows instead of on what it thinks.

I might have speculated on my chances of going to Heaven; but candidly I did not care. I could not have wept if I had tried. I had no wish to review the evils of my past. But the past did seem to have been a bit wasted. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions: the road to Heaven is paved with lost opportunities.

If you march your Winter Journeys you will have your reward, so long as all you want is a penguin's egg.

The mind of a horse is a very limited concern, relying almost entirely upon memory. He rivals our politicians in that he has little real intellect. Consequently, when the pony was faced with conditions different from those to which he was accustomed, he showed little adaptability.

And if the worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than a gruesome foe.

We are a nation of shop keepers.

I am glad The Worst Journey is coming out in Penguins: after all it is largely about penguins.