Quotes & Sayings About National Geographic

Words form the sinew and muscle that hold societies upright, he argued. Consider the Koran, the Bible, the American Constitution, but also letters from fathers to sons, last wills, blessings, curses. Thousands upon thousands of words infused with the full spectrum of emotions fill in the nooks and corners of human life. — National Geographic Society

It's not my vision when I cover a woman's face with a chador. I got the idea from a 'National Geographic' photo. I'm just showing their plight in the world. — Alexander McQueen

When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I'll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by 'National Geographic' or work with David Attenborough, but it didn't happen. I became a model. — Isabella Rossellini

National Geographic has awesome stuff. I like Court TV. Sometimes I'll watch Reality Mix because they have some interesting stuff on that. — Erik Estrada

In 2007, I received a National Geographic Expeditions Council grant to go around the top of the world and talk to Arctic people about how they've been impacted by climate change. — Gretel Ehrlich

I only watch National Geographic Channel, and also I have the app on my phone. I'm into astronomy and love to learn about new facts. — Sonu Nigam

For the same reason I read the National Geographic, I like to see places I will never visit. — Edward Bernays

You will be surprised but I do a lot of studying and I watch National Geographic. — Tracy Morgan

In the studio, I always put on National Geographic for inspiration. Looking at lions eating gazelles, all that type of stuff. — Big Sean

My big dream was to work as a photographer for 'National Geographic.' — Steffi Graf

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies. — Stephen Fry

My best sources are my travels and my collection of National Geographic. — Sergio Aragones

In the National Geographic movie of my twisted mind, the lion had just leaped on the gazelle, pinned it to the ground and mounted it from behind. Apparently, the devouring could wait. I should point out that these little flights of fancy on my part often involved extremely improbable animal pairings. I blamed cartoons. — Delphine Dryden

I feel like Africans are too often portrayed as people on the National Geographic channel: the image is of an African man in a loincloth chasing a gazelle. It's not intentionally racist; I wouldn't call it racist at all. It's a lack of understanding another culture. — Djimon Hounsou

Dolphins Aren't Smiling A dolphin's "smile" is actually an illusion. So is our belief that these animals can heal. BY LORI MARINO FROM AEON MAGAZINE PHOTOGRAPH BY VINCENT J. MUSI/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE — Anonymous

For the inhabitant of a country has at least nine characters: a professional, a national, a civic, a class, a geographic, a sexual, a conscious, an unconscious, and possibly even a private character to boot. He unites them in himself, but they dissolve him, so that he is really nothing more than a small basin hollowed out by these many streamlets that trickle into it and drain out of it again, to join other such rills in filling some other basin. Which is why every inhabitant of the earth also has a tenth character that is nothing else than the passive fantasy of spaces yet unfilled [ ... ] prevent[ing] precisely what should be his true fulfillment. — Robert Musil

Of course there is still unexplored terrestrial territory, but most of it is waterlogged. Submersed secret places, such as the Challenger Deep, which today lure hi-tech adventurers like Richard Branson and James Cameron, will undoubtedly provide welcome fodder for 'National Geographic.' — Seth Shostak

We must strive to form a comprehensive sublime nationalism whose first principal is national geographic unity and must strengthen this unity with deeds not with words. — Ameen Rihani

It's both Indiana Jones and 'National Geographic' that inspired me to be an Egyptologist. — Sarah Parcak

Unstuck her in time, day-sleeping in her bedroom. How old was she? Seven, seventeen, twenty-seven? Dusk or dawn? Couldn't tell by the light outside. Checked her phone. Evening. The house silent, her mother probably asleep. Out through the smell of her grandfather's fifty years of National Geographic, shelved in the hall. — William Gibson

I've read in the National Geographic about deepsea diving and why you have to wear a thick metal suit or the invisible pressure of the heavy undersea water will crush you like mud in a fist, until you implode. This is the word: implode. It has a dull final sound to it, like a lead door closing. — Margaret Atwood

I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation. — Lupe Fiasco

I'm a big fan of 'National Geographic', the magazine and the channel. Anything to do with the natural world. For years, when I was younger, I was convinced I would be a nature photographer, but that didn't pan out. — Tom Weston-Jones

She had not been conferred with a practical sense of how one went about this strange and all inverted business of being a girl, where seemingly natural stuff like going on about all the great things you just learned about Siberian tigers on National Geographic was suddenly weird, but totally weird stuff in and of itself like drawing around your eyeball with a pencil became normal, and it impressed to no end that it was a product of meticulous effort that made the twins seem so perfectly and effortlessly feminine. — Brian McGreevy

I have photographed sharks in waters around the globe, and I always want more and yearn to peer deeper into their world. To feed my passion and to raise awareness, I developed a story about sharks for 'National Geographic' magazine. — Brian Skerry

I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book. — Charles M. Blow

Practically every woman in town makes a showing at Tucker's after a Jake sighting. I feel like I am watching the National Geographic Channel on mating rituals in the wild. — L.A. Fiore

My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I'd spend one lifetime each in embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the 'National Geographic.' — Joseph Murray

While National Geographic magazine had given me a taste of the world, the three-dimensional details of this moment - the tickle of the rain drops, the suck sound of my feet in the mud, the challenge of getting photographs of the monkeys, my immature urge to make the driver wait even longer because he was annoying - would feed me for years to come. — Kristine K. Stevens

Strangely, I thought of the emotion I ought to feel without feeling it, as impartial as a National Geographic field researcher, carefully watching the events and chronicling them in a notebook. Deirdre finds that she is saddened by the news of her grandmother's death, and moreover, suddenly fears for the rest of her family and friends. — Maggie Stiefvater

Human experience comes suspended in the sickly-sweet amniotic fluid of commercial photography. And a world normally animated by abrasive differences is blithely reduced to a single, homogeneous National Geographic way of seeing. — Geoffrey Batchen

Although all the major industrial countries and a multitude of business units participate in the world trade in chemicals, the forces of free competition do not rule the world markets. The techniques of business diplomacy frequently supplement and in some instances have supplanted independent decision making by separate producers in response to free market forces. The geographic and industrial areas within which particular companies will operate, the scale of their output, the prices of their products, the use or nonuse of their technology, have increasingly become objects of negotiation, subjects of national and international agreement. More and more the conference table has been taking the place of the market as a regulator if the chemical industries. — George W. Stocking

I love weird science. I learned in an article in 'National Geographic' that there are trillions of bacteria in our guts that help us digest food. These are non-human creatures. — Will Hobbs

I stand in the center aisle of the auditorium, a wounded zebra in a National Geographic special, looking for someone, anyone to sit next to. A predator approaches: gray jock buzz cut, whistle around a neck thicker than his head. Probably a social studies teacher, hired to coach a blood sport. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I always take hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I used to work for 'National Geographic,' and they gave us a lot of film. — Yann Arthus-Bertrand

You have more issues than National Geographic by Austin LeFleur in Hissy Fit — Mary Kay Andrews

All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapour, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the night, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at its summit.
Sai, sitting on the veranda, was reading an article about giant squid in an old National Geographic. Every now and then she looked up at Kanchenjunga, observed its wizard phosphorescence with a shiver. The judge sat at the far corner with his chessboard, playing against himself. Stuffed under his chair where she felt safe was Mutt the dog, snoring gently in her sleep. A single bald lightbulb dangled on a wire above. It was cold, but inside the house, it was still colder, the dark, the freeze, contained by stone walls several feet deep. — Kiran Desai

National Geographic contacted me about getting on their label, and I was like, 'Wow, I want to be label mates with the sharks and lemurs!' — Bjork

As a kid, I used to fear that my life would be wasted. I would agonize over how I was going to live this finite life. We only have so much time, after all, and I didn't want my only experiences with different cultures to be on TV or in the pages of National Geographic. I wanted to visit the Kansas plains, the Virginia battlefields, and the California coast. I wanted to see the world instead of being stuck in just one part of it. I wanted to feel the energies of new places and different people, and I wanted to experience the glories of history. — Zak Bagans

In most cases I start off with a sketch. But I'm also thinking about real images: out of National Geographic, out of fashion magazines, out of The Economist, out of Time. I'm making a sketch, but I'm using the existing images that have been put out in the world. — Wangechi Mutu

Did you hear about the recently discovered temple in the Sudan ?"
I stared at him. "Yeah. I'm a regular reader of National Geographic."
Ol' Frankie's brows quirked. "You wield sarcasm, madam, as well as a master swordsman does."
"Gee, thanks." I smiled at him and batted my lashes.
Quit flirting . Patrick flicked the command into my head. He sounded half-annoyed, half-amused.
I'm not flirting.
Quit being cute and likeable.
An impossible request. I've always been too adorable for words. — Michele Bardsley

I doubt taking in a sullen, bitter, teenage girl with more issues than National Geographic is at the center of the vision board for a single woman in her early thirties. — Katja Millay

Everyone thinks it would be great to work for National Geographic. So did I. — Peter Menzel

I'd never been part of a group like that, so it was interesting, like a National Geographic special on wolves that I might watch with my dad.
And I was part of the pack. — Bill Konigsberg

I love watching the National Geographic channel. That show 'Taboo'? I love it! — Keshia Knight Pulliam

For crying out loud, Baker, what rock have you been living under? Oh, yeah, you're from Kansas. He said it as if Kansas were in some remote tribal region inhabited by illiterate natives like the ones in my National Geographic magazines. — Clare Vanderpool

When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there. — Sam Abell

My interest in science was excited at age nine by an article on astronomy in National Geographic; the author was Donald Menzel of the Harvard Observatory. For the next few years, I regularly made star maps and snuck out at night to make observations from a locust tree in our back yard. — Dudley R. Herschbach

If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical constants occurring in these laws are finally expressed through the four independent basic constants, we will be able to say that physical science has reached its end, that no excitement is left in further explorations, and that all that remains to a physicist is either tedious work on minor details or the self-educational study and adoration of the magnificence of the completed system. At that stage physical science will enter from the epoch of Columbus and Magellan into the epoch of the National Geographic Magazine! — George Gamow

It's only a two-day hike. But it lasts a lifetime. — National Geographic Society

The Democrats continue to snipe at Bush. They'll never give it up to him. You know Teddy Kennedy and Tom Daschle pick more nits than a father and son spider monkey team who know they're being followed by a National Geographic film crew. — Dennis Miller

While in college, I used to get my ideas from photographs in 'National Geographic.' I started painting palm trees and motorboats. — Peter Saul

In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog's master whispers in the dog's ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog's soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.
I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.
I am ready. — Garth Stein

I have a stunt double; his name is Glen Levy, and he has the hardest punch in the world. Seriously, it's actually been recorded by 'National Geographic.' He calls it the Hammer Fist. — Craig Horner

I watch a lot of 'National Geographic.' — Ridley Scott

I want to be a scientist who studies the ocean when I grow up. I would go out to sea, and scuba dive, and find new things, and National Geographic will hire me.
Sure, Nudge. Probably around the time I become president. — James Patterson

[Television executives] are afraid to advertise condoms that could save lives, but do not blush about telecasting a National Geographic special on President Reagan's pelvic plumbing. — Martin Nolan

When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the 'National Geographic' covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people. — Sylvia Earle

Let me be very clear. For me geography does not exist! I strongly object to the whole concept of "foreign literature"...and speaking of national identity: that is how dictatorships get started! In literature there is no periphery and no center; there are only writers. The problem is not geographic but rather numeric. In the 19th century there were at least thirty literary geniuses in Russia, Germany, France, England and the United States. Today we are lucky if there are five writers of that caliber in the whole world...Where does one find good literature today? Mostly in third world countries, because adversity, isolation, combat provide good working conditions. It is harder to be a good writer in a so-called "civilized" country, in the so-called "democracies. — Antonio Lobo Antunes

This was like being in one of those National Geographic magazines. We were among the natives now. — Brandi Salazar

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes. — Erma Bombeck

I love National Geographic. Just when you think you've seen the last lost native tribe, National Geographic will find a new one. — Sandra Bernhard

And she could be depressed if she wanted to be, she could sit and watch Dogs with Jobs on the National Geographic Channel and eat her way through a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits if she felt like it because nobody cared about her. In fact, she could sit there all day, from Barney and Friends to Porn Babes Laid Bare, with hours of the Landscape Channel in between, and eat the contents of an entire biscuit factory until she was an obese, earthbound balloon whose dead and bloated body would have to be hydraulically lifted from the house by a fire crew because nobody cared. — Kate Atkinson

I hope to repair certain important connections burned through by artificial speed, by inattentiveness. I walk, as everyone does, to see what lies ahead. I walk to remember. — Paul Salopek

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states protected by geographic situation, and as yet unspoiled and untorn with wealth; in general "men are rarely worthy to govern themselves." Republics are transient at best; they are the first form of society, arising from the union of families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and Africa is full of such democracies. but differentiation of economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments; and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of development. — Will Durant

I don't actually have a one wellspring of inspiration. Though I'm most often inspired while reading - both fiction and nonfiction. I subscribe to National Geographic, Scientific American, Discover, and a slew of other magazines. And it is while reading articles for pleasure and interest that an interesting 'What if?' will pop into my head. — James Rollins

I don't watch TV dramas. I watch ESPN, HBO boxing, National Geographic Channel and I kind of like to get some DVDs, movies that I haven't seen and I just pop them in. — Dominic Purcell

I remember when an editor at the National Geographic promised to run about a dozen of my landscape pictures from a story on the John Muir trail as an essay, but when the group of editors got together, someone said that my pictures looked like postcards. — Galen Rowell

We'll be busy tonight." He isn't wrong. Practically every woman in town makes a showing at Tucker's after a Jake sighting. I feel like I am watching the National Geographic Channel on mating rituals in the wild. I can hear the narrator in my head. The female approaches, the sway of her hips a sign of her willingness to reproduce. Obviously in heat, her open blouse exposes her unnaturally large . . . "Hey, — L.A. Fiore

America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles. — Djimon Hounsou

Is it possible to know the truth without challenging it first? — National Geographic Society

Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls "the National Geographic." She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it's too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa's camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn't take it with him when he left her. She said, "Maybe he wanted you to have it."
I said, "But I was negative-thirty years old." She said, "Still." Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls! — Jonathan Safran Foer

I'm aware of the stereotype many liberals have about conservative Catholics. The former believe the latter don't think - that conservative religious people don't care about facts and rigorous inquiry. But my conservative Catholic parents were thinkers. Twice as often as my parents told their four children to go wash, they told us to go look something up. At our suburban tract house on Long Island in the 1970s, our parents shelved the Encyclopaedia Britannica right next to the dinner table so we could easily reach for a volume to settle the frequent debates. The rotating stack of periodicals in our kitchen included not only religiously oriented newsletters, but also the New York Times and National Geographic. Our parents took us to science museums, woke us up for lunar eclipses, and pushed us to question our textbooks and even our teachers when they sounded wrong. — Alice Domurat Dreger

When you ate her tuna casserole, you didn't talk or flip through a National Geographic. Your eyes and ears stayed inside your mouth. Your whole world kept inside your mouth, feeling and careful for the little balled-up tinfoils Irene Casey would hide in the tuna parts. A side effect of eating slow was, you naturally, genuinely tasted, and the food tasted better. Could be other ladies were better cooks, but you'd never notice. — Chuck Palahniuk

If you are you, breathe. If you breathe, you talk. If you talk, you ask. If you ask, you think. If you think, you search. If you search, you experience. If you experience, you learn. If you learn, you grow. If you grow, you wish. If you wish, you find. And if you find, you doubt. If you doubt, you question. If you question, you understand and if you understand, you know. If you know, you want to know more. If you want to know, more you are alive. — National Geographic Society

One National Geographic survey revealed that 85 percent of Americans between ages eighteen and twenty-four were unable to locate either Afghanistan or Iraq on a map. Sixty-nine percent couldn't find Great Britain, — Patrick Smith

Flipped through memories like old copies of National Geographic, pages in a yellowing high-school year book, cable-television channels looking for a baseball game. — Dennis Vickers

The real magic in National Geographic isn't how much money they have left at the end of the year. It's the fact that through their overall focus they are reaching hundreds of millions of people and educating people about the world. It just happens to be done in a business-oriented kind of way that is more sustainable. — Steve Case

Today, National Geographic has a membership side with a magazine and some television side, and they generate about a billion dollars in revenue, and they're profitable. And so at the end of the year they have some bottom line profit which they can then reinvest, because they're running it as a not-for-profit in charitable endeavors. — Steve Case