Admiral Richard Byrd Quotes

Part of me remained forever at Latitude 80 degrees 08 minutes South: what survived of my youth, my vanity, perhaps, and certainly my skepticism. On the other hand, I did take away something that I had not fully possessed before: appreciation of the sheer beauty and miracle of being alive, and a humble set of values. All this happened four years ago. Civilization has not altered my ideas. I live more simply now, and with more peace.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbours up. Richard Byrd, the US admiral and explorer, gave a similar explanation in the opening of his book Alone, in which he described his adventure alone through seven months in the Antarctic: I wanted to go for experience's sake: one man's desire to know that kind of experience to the full... to taste... solitude long enough to find out how good it really was... I wanted something more than just privacy... I would be able to live exactly as I chose, obedient to no necessities but those imposed by wind and night and cold, and to no man's laws but my own.

Just as the long night of the Arctic ends, the brilliant sunshine of Truth shall come again... and those who are of darkness shall fall in its Light... FOR I HAVE SEEN THAT LAND BEYOND THE POLE, THAT CENTER OF THE GREAT UNKNOWN.

Behind every legend, strange to say, can be found a kernel of truth, a group of facts around which the legend was built.

Scientists say that it is impossible for any life to exist deep underground, that the Earth is solid through and through. However, at this point in time, no scientist has actually ever been far enough underground to prove their theories.

Why is the sun invisible so long in winter near the farthest points north or south?

Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd, speaking under the auspices of the Council for Democracy, got it right. “Whenever a man stands before you and tells you to bow down before the mythical invincibility of the Nazi tyranny,” he said, “that man is a warmonger.” He added, “Whenever he tells you that democracy is done for, that we must not have the faith in the eternal strength of our democratic institutions, that man is a warmonger.