Quotes & Sayings About Shackleton

From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great Polar journey that can be made. — Ernest Shackleton

If you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you've got to keep going. — Ernest Shackleton

He promised to write a book later about the trip. He sold the rights to the motion pictures and still photographs that would be taken, and he agreed to give a long lecture series on his return. In all these arrangments, there was one basic assumption - that Shackleton would survive. — Alfred Lansing

I would love to do a western. I would love to play an explorer. That is always something that has really captured my imagination since I was a kid, like James Cook or Magellan or Earnest Shackleton. — John C. Reilly

If I had not some strength of will I would make a first class drunkard. — Ernest Shackleton

Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results. — Ernest Shackleton

In any age, there is no shortage of people willing to embark on a hazardous adventure. Columbus and Magellan filled eight ships between them for voyages into the void. One hundred and fifty years ago, the possibilities offered by missionary service were limitless and first-rate. Later, Scott and Shackleton turned away droves after filling their crews for their desperate Antarctic voyages. In 1959 ... sailor H.W. Tilman, looking for a crew for a voyage in an old wooden yacht to the Southern Ocean, ran this ad in the London Times: "Hand [man] wanted for long voyage in small boat. No pay, no prospects, not much pleasure." Tilman received more replies than he could investigate, one from as far away as Saigon. — Peter Nichols

I thought you'd rather have a live donkey than a dead lion. — Ernest Shackleton

I had a dream when i was 22 that someday i would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till i came to one of the poles of the earth — Ernest Shackleton

Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all. — Ernest Shackleton

We can pass the eight Dreadnoughts, if we are sure of the eight Shackleton's. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Optimism is true moral courage. — Ernest Shackleton

Optimism is the true moral courage — Ernest Shackleton

Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. — Ernest Shackleton

My good friend the Governor said I could settle down at Port Stanley and take things quietly for a few weeks. The street of that port is about a mile and a half long. It has the slaughterhouse at one end and the graveyard at the other. The chief distraction is to walk from the slaughterhouse to the graveyard. For a change one may walk from the graveyard to the slaughterhouse. — Ernest Shackleton

One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible. — Ernest Shackleton

The days of exploration of Shackleton and Scott are long gone. Everything has been climbed, crossed, done. Now what we're exploring are the full boundaries of human endeavour. It's not physical - it's all in the head. — Lewis Gordon Pugh

I have actually led more expeditions to Antarctica than Scott, Amundsen, and Shackleton put together. — Paul Watson

No person who has not spent a period of his life in those 'stark and sullen solitudes that sentinel the Pole' will understand fully what trees and flowers, sun-flecked turf and running streams mean to the soul of a man — Ernest Shackleton

I would warn very sincerely against the pitfalls of copying photographs. A frozen, split-second bears little relationship to the continuing process of living reality. It is better to look, look again, and keep on looking. — Keith Shackleton

Side note: Down here, you're either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you'll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he's a legend, all-star personality, but there's the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e. won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don't know. Finally, there's Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand. — Maria Semple

Thumbs-up. We could never make Dry Witch Toby cry. The boys said she was a hardass - she and Rebecca were the two hardest asses. Rebecca was jolly on the outside, but you did not push her buttons. As for Toby, she was leathery inside and out. "Don't try it, Shackleton," she would say, even though her back was turned. Nuala was too kind to us, but Toby held us to account, and we trusted Toby more: you'd — Margaret Atwood

Adventure books are my personal favorites. 'The Endurance,' a story about Ernest Shackleton's legendary Antarctica expedition, or 'Into Thin Air,' Jon Krakauer's personal account of the 1996 disaster on Mt Everest, are two notables. — Dean Karnazes

When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia. I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three. I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, 'Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.' Crean confessed to the same idea. One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts. — Ernest Shackleton

Through endurance we conquer. — Ernest Shackleton

When things are easy, I hate it. — Ernest Shackleton

Shackleton's unwillingness to succumb to the demands of everyday life & his insatiable excitement w/ unrealistic ventures left him open to the accusation of being basically immature & irresponsible. & very possibly he was-by conventional standards. But the great leaders of historical record-the Napoleons, the Nelsons, the Alexanders-have rarely fitted any conventional mold, & it is perhaps an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms. There can be little doubt that Shackleton, in this way, was an extraordinary leader of men. — Alfred Lansing

I do not know what 'moss' stands for in the proverb , but if it stood for useful knowledge ... I gathered more moss by rolling than I ever did at school. — Ernest Shackleton

After the conquest of the South Pole by Amundsen who, by a narrow margin of days only, was in advance of the British Expedition under Scott, there remained but one great main object of Antarctic journeying - the crossing of the South Polar continent from sea to sea — Ernest Shackleton

Teachers should be very careful not to spoil their pupils' taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition. — Ernest Shackleton

I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure. — Ernest Shackleton

By endurance we conquer. — Ernest Shackleton

The noise resembles the roar of heavy, distant surf. Standing on the stirring ice one can imagine it is disturbed by the breathing and tossing of a mighty giant below. — Ernest Shackleton

We had seen God in His splendors, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man. — Ernest Shackleton

Men Wanted for Dangerous Expedition: Low Wages for Long Hours of Arduous Labour under Brutal Conditions; Months of Continual Darkness and Extreme Cold; Great Risk to Life and Limb from Disease, Accidents and Other Hazards; Small Chance of Fame in Case of Success. — Ernest Shackleton

I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns. — Ernest Shackleton

After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied. — Ernest Shackleton

Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last ... to the North Pole. — Ernest Shackleton

Keep a record of every picture you paint, have them photographed and write down where they went. Some day, when one reaches a great age, there will be calls for a Retrospective Exhibition of a life's work. — Keith Shackleton

I chose life over death for myself and my friends ... I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all. — Ernest Shackleton

A man must shape himself to a new mark directly the old one goes to ground. — Ernest Shackleton

Huge blocks of ice, weighing many tons, were lifted into the air and tossed aside as other masses rose beneath them. We were helpless intruders in a strange world, our lives dependent upon the play of grim elementary forces that made a mock of our puny efforts. — Ernest Shackleton

I called to the other men that the sky was clearing, and then a moment later I realized that what I had seen was not a rift in the clouds but the white crest of an enormous wave. — Ernest Shackleton

Chase's ability to adjust his manner of leadership to the needs of his men begs comparison to one of the greatest and most revered leaders of all time, Sir Ernest Shackleton. — Nathaniel Philbrick

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a winter journey, give me Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen; and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time. — Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Loneliness is the penalty of leadership, but the man who has to make the decisions is assisted greatly if he feels that there is no uncertainty in the minds of those who follow him, and that his orders will be carried out confidently and in expectation of success. — Ernest Shackleton

Shackleton faced many of the same problems encountered by managers today: bringing a diverse group together to work toward a common goal; handling the constant naysayer; bucking up the perpetual worrier; keeping the disgruntled from poisoning the atmosphere; battling boredom and fatigue; bringing order and success to a chaotic environment; working with limited resources. — Margot Morrell

A good landscape painting is not just a demonstration of competent application of paint. It must offer a feeling of homage to the subject. — Keith Shackleton