Meaningful quotes have always been a great source of inspiration to me in all aspects of my life, but there is something about a travel quote that will motivate me to dream bigger.
Whether I’m in a season where traveling is limited or maybe I'm questioning if I should travel solo, these inspiring words give me the courage to say yes to new adventures.
Read over this big list of travel quotes to find your own inspiration to dream, plan and discover new travel destinations!
You’ll find funny travel quotes, short travel quotes (perfect for a quick reminder), inspiring travel quotes, quotes for the traveler (not the tourist), funny travel quotes (for a good laugh) and famous travel quotes on this list. Enjoy!
Short Travel Quotes
1. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu
2. “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
– Andre Gide
Traveling to a new location or traveling solo can be really scary, but once you do it is almost always worth it!
3. “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” – Ibn Battuta
4. “Don’t listen to what they say, go see” – Chinese Proverb
5. “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” – Chief Seattle
6. “Oh the places you’ll go!” – Dr. Seuss
7. “Don’t just tell your children about the world. Show them.” – Unknown
As a mother and travel lover, this is one of my parenting goals! Even if I can’t get them to a foreign country every vacation, I want to be able to show them how other people live and eat and play. To show them how beautiful our world is and why we need to care for it and one another.
8. “Travel teaches toleration.” – Benjamin Disraeli
I could add that travel teaches patience as well!
9. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Mae West
10. “People don’t take trips — trips take people.” – John Steinbeck
11. “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Anonymous
12. “The journey is my home.” – Muriel Rukeyser
13. “To travel is to live.” – Hans Christian Anderson
14. “Life is a journey, not a destination.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
15. “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” – Anita Desai
Inspiring Travel Quotes
16. “Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world” – Gustave Flaubert
17. "Fear is only temporary. Regrets last forever.” – Unknown
18. “If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel – as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them – wherever you go.” – Anthony Bourdain
You will learn more about yourself and the world by traveling than any other teachings. Even if you’re not 22 anymore, I encourage you to always try and “travel as far and as widely as possible.”
19. “The gladdest moment in human life is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton
20. “Travel – the best way to be lost and found at the same time.” – Brenna Smith
21. “A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles.” – Tim Cahill
22. “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” – Martin Buber
23. “Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right.” – Tony Robbins
24. “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” – Paul Coelho
25. “He who would travel happily must travel light.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
26. “Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
My experience in Italy was one of those places that I would have loved to stay, but had to go.
27. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” – Neale Donald Walsch
28. ”Adventure may hurt you but monotony will kill you.” – Ghaniya Dewi Arassyi
29. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” – Jack Kerouac
You are not guaranteed the number of days in your life–make sure you’re not putting off the important things.
30. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
31. “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.” – Wallace Stevens
32. “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the most pleasant sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure.” – Freya Stark
Traveling solo can be the most terrifying, exciting and fulfilling decision you can make. Awaken with an open mind and adventurous spirit and you’ll discover how courageous and independent and strong you truly are.
33. “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” – Aldous Huxley
34. “The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.”
– Henry David Thoreau
I must be pretty interesting because I have been lost a time or two…
35. “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.”
– Muhammad
36. “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain
37. “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” – Hilaire Belloc
38. “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.” – Dolly Parton
39. “And then there is the most dangerous risk of all — the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
– Randy Komisar
You should not wait until retirement or when the kids are more grown or when you have more money or whatever other reasons you may have to put off traveling. You are not guaranteed anything in life so don’t put off exploring the places you have dreamed of experiencing. If you want to do it badly enough, you will find a way.
40. “Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comforts of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things. -air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky. -all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” – Cesare Pavese
41. “If happiness is the goal, and it should be, then adventures should be a priority.”
– Richard Branson
42. “Travel brings power and love back into your life.” – Rumi
43. “Travel is not a reward for working, it’s education for living.” – Anthony Bourdain
Traveler Quotes
44. “Investment in travel is an investment in yourself.” – Matthew Karsten
45. “Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou
46. “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
47. “The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.” – Agnes Repplier
48. “It’s a big world out there. It would be a shame not to experience it.” – J. D. Andrews
49. “If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.” – James Michener
Please, please be open to the possibilities that surround you when visiting someplace new. An open heart and mind can create magical experiences.
50. “Our happiest moments as tourists always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” – Lawrence Block
51. “So much of who we are is where we have been.” – Unknown
52. “It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
53. “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving” – Lao Tzu
Sometimes the best things that happen to us are the moments that were not planned. Remember to not have every minute scheduled out when exploring someplace new. Give time to wander and see and taste and listen to everything that is around you.
Funny Travel Quotes
54. I’ve got 99 problems. But I am on vacation and I am ignoring them all!” – Anonymous
55. “Worst thing about being a tourist, is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist!”
– Russell Baker
56. “Isn’t it amazing how much stuff we get done the day before vacation?” – Zig Ziglar
The days leading up to a vacation are some of the busiest and most frantic for me! I also hate to come home to a dirty house so you can bet I’ll also be cleaning!
57. “I want to vacation so long, I forget all my passwords.” – Unknown
58. “I need a six month vacation, twice a year.” – Anonymous
59. “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” – Hemmingway
Have you ever wanted to murder your husband while on a trip? It’s a good thing you love him :)
60. “Let’s wander where the wifi is weak.” – Anonymous
61. “I’m ready to go on vacation” –EVERYONE
62. “I’ve followed my heart and it led me to the airport!” – Unknown
63. “I’m not lost, I’m exploring.” – Anonymous
64. “Do you ever stress about money and then accidentally book another flight?” – Unknown
65. “I want someone to look at me the way I look at a travel brochure.” – Anonymous
66. “I love airports because the rules of society just don’t apply. Eat a pizza and drink wine at 7 a.m. in your sweatpants. Nobody cares!” – Unknown (but also me)
My husband and I laughed about this when we were in the airport last because it is sooo true! And we may or may not have been one of those people…
Famous Travel Quotes
67. “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
You cannot leave your mark on the world if you do not go and see it. Not only visit new places, but leave it better than you left it. Provide a helping hand or kind word to the people and places that welcomed you.
68. “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”
– Agustine of Hippo
69. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.” – Robert Frost
Be brave enough to go off the beaten path every once in a while! It’s usually where you find the best food, most beautiful beaches and friendliest people.
70. “I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” – Susan Sontag
71. "Once a year, go somewhere you've never been before. – Dalai Lama
72. “I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.”
– Mary Anne Radmacher
73. “It is better to see something once, than to hear about it a thousand times.”
– Asian Proverb
74. “Travel is never a matter of money but of courage.” – Paulo Coelho
75.“Fill your life with experiences, not things. Have stories to tell, not stuff to show.”
– Unknown
My hope for you after reading these inspiring, true and sometimes funny travel quotes:
I hope you are encouraged, inspired and a little more open minded to travel to new and exciting locations.
I hope you have been reminded that you are brave and strong to meet new people and experience new cultures.
I hope you do not waste the time you have been given on this earth by thinking you have time.
I hope you travel with love in your heart.
I hope you are courageous enough to go off the beaten path.
I hope you discover yourself by discovering new places.
I hope you travel.
I'd love to discover your favorite travel quote–comment below!
Safe travels!
Jessica
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