101+ Inspiring Travel Quotes from Around the Globe

Travel quotes hold incredible power. Whether they are inspirational or motivational, these quotes often resonate with us in ways we can’t express. We’ve compiled a collection of our favorite quotes paired with stunning images to inspire your wanderlust.

101 Best Travel Quotes

Dave and I have found that inspirational quotes motivate us to embrace new adventures and strive for a more fulfilling life. When we launched our travel blog in 2008, we began collecting travel quotes to share. We were pioneers of daily inspiration on Twitter over 15 years ago. Whether you’re drawn to brief quotes or those with more depth, you’re sure to appreciate these motivational travel quotes.

Favorite Travel Quotes

Inspiring travel quotes have sparked our curiosity and encapsulated the true meaning of our journeys. Consider these words of wisdom:

• “A journey is best measured in friends, not in miles.” ~ Tim Cahill
• “Life is short, and the world is wide.” ~ Simon Raven.
• “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” ~ Saint Augustine
• “People don’t take trips, trips take people.” ~ John Steinbeck
• “Travel far, pay no fare… a book can take you anywhere.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
• “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” ~ Lao Tzu

These quotes provide unique insights into the enriching experiences that travel offers.

Famous Travel Quotes

Feel free to pin these quotes, use them as captions for your Instagram posts, or print them to display at home for daily inspiration!

Let’s begin our list with some of the most iconic travel quotes from renowned individuals. As we move along, other less well-known quotes will appear.

• “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.” ~ Saint Augustine
• “Not all those who wander are lost.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
• “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” ~ Helen Keller
• “Take only memories, leave only footprints.” ~ Chief Seattle
• “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness; many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” ~ Mark Twain
• “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust
• “Travel makes one modest; you see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” ~ Gustave Flaubert
• “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.” ~ H. Jackson Brown Jr.
• “Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.” ~ Hemingway
• “Like all great travelers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
• “Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” ~ Ibn Battuta
• “A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” ~ Lao-Tzu
• “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” ~ Dame Freya Madeline Stark
• “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” ~ Henry Miller

Adventure Travel Quotes

• “If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it’s lethal.” ~ Paul Coelho
• “Great things never came from comfort zones.” ~ Anonymous
• “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” ~ Maya Angelou
• “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journey.” ~ Babs Hoffman
• “Fear is only temporary. Regrets last forever.”
• “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
• “Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.”
• “Climb the mountain so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.” ~ David McCullough
• “Jobs fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul.” ~ Jamie Lyn Beatty

Funny Travel Quotes

Funny travel quotes are a joy! When travel becomes stressful or frustrating, it’s refreshing to laugh about the little things.

• “Don’t worry about the world ending today; it’s already tomorrow in Australia.” ~ Charles M. Schulz
• “I have found out that there’s no better way to discover if you love people or hate them than to travel with them.” ~ Mark Twain
• “A journey is like marriage. The surest way to be wrong is to think you can control it.” ~ John Steinbeck
• “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.” ~ Anthony Bourdain
• “I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.” ~ Henny Youngman
• “There’s nothing safer than flying; it’s the crashing that’s dangerous.” ~ Theo Cowa
• “I always like to visit Washington D.C. It gives me a chance to see my money.” ~ Bob Hope
• “Jet lag is for amateurs.” ~ Dick Clark
• “Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.” ~ Paul Theroux
• “I wish I had never gone traveling,” said no one ever.

Inspirational Quotes About Travel

Inspirational travel quotes can transform lives. I used to plaster quotes all over my home, and now that we’ve settled into a new place, I’m once again collecting inspiring quotes about life and adventure. Words possess significant meaning and can shift mindsets.

• “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~ Andre Gide
• “It’s better to travel well than to arrive.” ~ Buddha
• “It is not the destination where you end up, but the mishaps and memories you create along the way.” ~ Penelope Riley
• “The important thing is to never stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~ Albert Einstein
• “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.”
• “I’d rather own a little and see the world than own the world and see a little of it.” ~ Alexander Sattler
• “It is better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times.”
• “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.”
• “When was the last time you did something for the first time?” ~ Anonymous
• “Someday I’m going to be free, and I’m going to travel the world.”
• “You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” ~ John Lennon

Short Travel Quotes Captions

For 20 years, Dave and I have collected quotes about travel and shared them since our blog’s inception in 2008. These quotes have lifted our spirits during tough times, oriented our perspectives on life, and often brought smiles to our faces.

Here are some of our favorite travel quotes that we’ve shared across social media from Twitter to Pinterest.

• “Live with no excuses and travel with no regrets.” ~ Oscar Wilde
• “We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.”
• “People don’t take trips; trips take people.” ~ John Steinbeck
• “Don’t listen to what they say; go see.” ~ Chinese Proverb
• “Don’t quit your daydream.”
• “I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”
• “Oh, the places you’ll go.” ~ Dr. Seuss
• “Try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” ~ Maya Angelou
• “Life’s a journey, not a destination.” ~ AEROSMITH/Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “Where to next?”
• “To travel is to live.” ~ Hans Christian Anderson
• “I want to make memories all over the world.”

Meaningful Quotes About Travel

• “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” ~ Mark Twain
• “The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” ~ Paul Coelho
• “To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” ~ Aldous Huxley
• “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” ~ Gandhi
• “There’s a sunrise and sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.”
• “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
• “If your ship doesn’t come in, swim out to it.” ~ Johnathan Winters
• “Without new experiences, something inside us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.”
• “Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.” ~ Rick Watson

Happy Travel Quotes

• “Doing what you like is freedom; liking what you do is happiness.”
• “Because when you stop and look around, this life is pretty amazing.”
• “This heart of mine was made to travel this world.”
• “The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.”
• “Let’s find some beautiful places to get lost.”
• “I’m in love with cities I’ve never been to and people I’ve never met.” ~ John Green
• “Travel: the best way to be lost and found at the same time.” ~ Brenna Smith
• “The journey is my home.”

Unique Travel Quotes

Not all noteworthy travel quotes are widely recognized. We’ve explored far and wide to uncover unique quotes about travel that you can enjoy.

• “It’s a big world out there; it would be a shame not to experience it.”
• “You can shake the sand from your shoes, but not from your soul.”
• “Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and think of what could go right.” ~ Anonymous
• “We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.” ~ Hilaire Belloc
• “It doesn’t matter where you’re going; it’s who you have beside you.”
• “Traveling is not something you’re good at; it’s something you do, like breathing.” ~ Gayle Foreman
• “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
• “It feels good to be lost in the right direction.”
• “Traveling allows you to become so many different versions of yourself.”
• “Travel has a way of stretching the mind.” ~ Ralph Crawshaw
• “Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” ~ Anatole France
• “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
• “A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles.” ~ Tim Cahill
• “Just go. Go see all the beauty in the world.”

Travel Quotes by Famous People

I enjoy discovering travel quotes from my favorite celebrities and historical figures. Here are some standout quotes:

• “I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
• “If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and improve, I urge you to travel as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Discover how others live, eat, and cook. Learn from them wherever you go.” ~ Anthony Bourdain
• “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing your lawn. Climb that mountain.” ~ Jack Kerouac
• “Paris is always a good idea.” ~ Audrey Hepburn
• “You go away for a long time and return a different person; you never come all the way back.” ~ Paul Theroux
• “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” ~ Mae West
• “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” ~ Robert Frost
• “We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel next, to find ourselves.” ~ Pico Iyer
• “Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” ~ Dalai Lama
• “Though we travel the world looking for beauty, we must bring it with us or we won’t find it.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “The only people who ever get to interesting places are those who get lost.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
• “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” ~ Charles Dudley Warner
• “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.” ~ Wallace Stevens
• “Keep your face always toward the sunshine—and shadows will fall behind you.” ~ Walt Whitman
• “Try to be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” ~ Maya Angelou
• “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 to understand each other, we may even become friends.” ~ Maya Angelou
• “The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.” ~ Oprah Winfrey
• “The more I traveled, the more I realized that fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.” ~ Shirley MacLaine

Bonus Travel Quotes

To conclude, here’s a practical travel quote that can also be inspirational:

• “When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.” ~ Susan Heller.
• “One of the happiest moments in life is the departure on a distant journey into unknown lands.” ~ Sir Richard Burton
• “And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.” ~ Louis Armstrong
• “When you’re traveling, you are defined by who you are at that very moment. People don’t have your past to judge you. There are no yesterdays on the road.” ~ William Least Heat Moon
• “Once the travel bug bites, there is no known antidote, and I know that I will be happily infected until the end of my life.” ~ Michael Palin

We leave you with the sage words of Louis Armstrong. Seriously, do you ever just sit back and think to yourself, what a wonderful world? We certainly do.

When we embarked on our first travels in 2000, we experienced a profound transformation. Our lives were forever altered. We have left a piece of ourselves in various corners of the globe, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

What are your favorite travel quotes? Now that we’ve ignited your wanderlust, please share your favorite travel quotes in the comments below. Whether you’re hunting for Instagram captions or seeking inspiration, we hope these travel quotes have inspired you!

All images are owned by The Planet D, captured during our adventures across seven continents and 110 countries.