Russell Freedman Quotes

The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

The more ships have grown in size and consequence, the more their place in our imagination has shrunk.

Historically, maritime travelers had to pass around the entire mass of North and South America, including the bottom tip, the tempestuous Cape Horn, which was littered with shipwrecks.

At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.

So that between the Cape of St. Maria and Japan we were four months and twenty-two days; at which time there were no more than six besides myself that could stand upon his feet.

Who cares about the men who steered your breakfast cereal through winter storms? How ironic that the more ships have grown in size and consequence, the less space they take up in our imagination.

Beware of bad Asians

I'd always been interested in maritime history, especially the great liners. I'd have done a book about the Titanic if it hadn't already been done to death by James Cameron and Celine Dion.

Columbus real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer.

When Columbus took off, the purpose was to improve trade relations with China. That problem has not been solved to this very day, but just look at the by-products.

Every ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus.

I'm very much a person that believes that there's something that was introduced into Kenya and Africa as we know it that has made us despise our bodies.

As far as TV shows are concerned, I would love to do a travel show.

I took my son to Thailand and really immersed myself in the stuff I wanted to learn and I wanted to improve on, and when I got a taste of that motivation and that inspiration as far as what I wanted to see my body do, I immediately was excited about it.

Among the fables that inspired the British Admiralty's cartographic assignments to Captain James Cook in the 1770s and Captain George Vancouver in the 1790s was a 1640 account under the name of Bartholomew de Fonte that appeared in a journal with the delightful title 'The Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs for the Curious.'

I'd like to see Alaska or cross the Atlantic. My father-in-law spent some years crewing luxury yachts from port to port for their owners. He says the starlit skies over the Atlantic are extraordinary because there is no light pollution. I like the thought of seeing those stars, G&T in hand.

Africa is one of my favorite places because there are so many things to do - either surfing or going to see the animals. You can drive two hours or six hours up the coast - or just 15 minutes up the road - and it's probably something you haven't seen before.

I spent about a year traveling overland from Egypt through Sudan and Ethiopia, and eventually into East Africa.

A water route to Chinese trade replacing the long, arduous Silk Road was a great dream of the Renaissance.

My father was a welder on the second-highest sail, so the Opera House has a special place in my heart.

I found the brick-making process fascinating - how, after being burnt, the brick would come out strong. I liked to sit on the stack of bricks and look as far as I could. I'd do the same at a hillock near my school - just sit on top at leisure and enjoy the feeling of being on top of the world.

I was growing up in Hyesan, right by the closest North Korea-China border. China was just across the river: you could see across. So I was curious. On the river, on both sides, you have houses, then mountains. I wanted to know what was on the other side of the Chinese mountains.

The best way to get to know Africa is to go there and see what it is. To know somewhere that crazy and that magnificent, you have to spend some time among people, the rhythm of their lives.

There never was a great man yet who spent all his life inland.

Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai 'Ngaje Ngai', the House of God. Close to the western summit there is a dried and frozen carcas of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.