Stefansson Quotes & Sayings

Hell is having arms but no one to embrace. — Jon Kalman Stefansson

The hours are numerous and the clock seldom measures the time that passes inside us, the real lifetime, and because of this many days can fit into a few hours, and vice versa, and numbers of years can be an imprecise measure of a man's lifetime, he who dies at forty has perhaps actually lived much longer than he who dies at ninety. — Jon Kalman Stefansson

Having an adventure shows that someone is incompetent, that something has gone wrong. An adventure is interesting enough - in retrospect. Especially to the person who didn't have it. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

He who has no dream is in danger — Jon Kalman Stefansson

We Icelanders are an excellent animal model for humans. This is exactly the way you find common disease genes. — Kari Stefansson

The philosophers of the Middle Ages demonstrated both that the Earth did not exist and also that it was flat. Today they are still arguing about whether the world exists, but they no longer dispute about whether it is flat. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

When man spoke his first word he became the thread that quivers eternally between evil and goodness, Heaven and Hell. — Jon Kalman Stefansson

What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

False modesty is better than none. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Adventure is a sign of incompetence. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

A land may be said to be discovered the first time a European, presumably an Englishman, sets foot on it. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

He wants to accomplish something in life, learn languages, see the world, read a thousand books, he wants to discover whether there is any core, but sometimes it's hard to think and read when one is stiff and sore after a difficult fishing voyage, wet and cold after twelve hours' working in the meadows, when his thoughts can be so heavy that he can hardly lift them, then it's a long way to the core. — Jon Kalman Stefansson

Bardur and the boy had leaned back a bit and looked at the sparkling sky that makes us humble and powerful at once and seems sometimes to speak to us. What is says carefully cleanses old wounds. — Jon Kalman Stefansson

There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson

The most striking contradiction of our civilization is the fundamental reverence for truth which we profess and the thorough-going disregard for it which we practice. — Vilhjalmur Stefansson