Quotes & Sayings About Machu Picchu

I remembered an unpleasant weekend spent struggling to comprehend the philosopher Immanuel Kant's explanation of the difference between calling something beautiful and calling it sublime. Nowadays, we throw around the word "sublime" to describe gooey desserts or overpriced handbags. In Kant's epistemology, it meant something limitless, an aesthetically pleasing entity so huge that it made the perceiver's head hurt. Machu Picchu isn't just beautiful, it's sublime. — Mark Adams

It wasn't the high thin mountain air that took our breath away. Those stone steps led us up to a place unlike any other on earth. We were overcome by the vision spread out before us; a purely mystical embodiment of space, time, setting, and silence. Up here the noise of our fellow travelers was strangely absent, muffled beneath a mantle of quiet that permeated the mountaintop city. No one was immune. In that first view, in that first moment, every visitor absorbed the essence of Machu Picchu in reverent stillness. — George L. Ayers

All man must live in Machu Picchu for some time! Over there, you will be closer to the universe and you will realise how trivial you are in this chaotic cosmos. Science is the only power which will make you bigger and significant in this universe! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It's an irritating reality that many places and events defy description. Angkor Wat and Machu Picchu, for instance, seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after,you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you've been and whats happened. In the end, you're just happy you were there- with your eyes open- and lived to see it. — Anthony Bourdain

The critics are like tourists who return from a trip saying they've "done" Machu Picchu: "Okay, we've done magical realism," so now we can throw it out. — Gore Vidal

When I was in my twenties and just so sexually prolific, the first time I went to Machu Picchu, this guy, a spiritual teacher, says to me, "When you make love, you must be making love." I thought that was the greatest advice I had ever heard. — Woody Harrelson

Night falls over Machu Picchu to the sound of Abba's 'Dancing Queen'. — Michael Palin

I did the Kilimanjaro climb a few years ago, then the six-day trek to Machu Picchu in Peru so this bike ride to raise money for Great Ormond Street seemed like the next big challenge. — Denise Van Outen

Accept that cars aren't necessary and that some meals take hours, that we can now fly to space, that there's nothing wrong with crashing on couches if you're on an adventure, that three outfits are enough, that sunrises are free, that the first time you see Machu Picchu it will break your heart, that being alone in a country with no money and no return ticket will teach you more about yourself than any therapist ever could. — Aric S. Queen

Separating fact and fiction in Inca history is impossible, because virtually all the sources available are Spanish accounts of stories that had already been vetted by the Inca emperors to highlight their own heroic roles. Imagine a history of modern Iraq written by Dick Cheney and based on authorized biographies of Sadam Hussein published in Arabic, and you'll get some idea of what historians face. — Mark Adams