These Arctic quotes will inspire you. The Arctic, relating to the regions around the North Pole or (of weather conditions) very cold.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging Arctic quotes, Arctic sayings, and Arctic proverbs.
Best Arctic Quotes
- “Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green.” ~ H. P. Blavatsky.
- “I believe Ronald Reagan can make this country what it once was… an Arctic region covered with ice.” ~ Steve Martin
- “There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.” ~ Vilhjalmur Stefansson
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“You know how they say, ‘What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas?’ What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.” ~ Kumi Naidoo
- “No culture has yet solved the dilemma each has faced with the growth of a conscious mind: how to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in all life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s own culture but within oneself.” ~ Barry Lopez
- “Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the Arctic are a call to action.” ~ Susan Collins
- “O proudly name their names who bravely sail| To seek brave lost in Arctic snows and seas!” ~ Helen Hunt Jackson
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“The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a unique and biologically special place that should be preserved.” ~ Dan Lipinski
- “Remember, the Arctic didn’t have any ice. And the Northwest Passage was wide open. They were raising grapes in Scotland for God sakes, had a huge winery. Iceland was a farming community. As some of the glaciers retreated they found villages that were covered with ice.” ~ Don Young
- “Remember in 1973 the same science chatter said that the coming Ice Age is going to occur, we’re going to lose millions of people. And the politicians knew how to solve it, they just didn’t have the courage to solve it; they were going to put coal dust on the Arctic.” ~ Don Young
- “The undisturbed coastal plain is home to a wide variety of plants and animals and is the only wilderness sanctuary in North America that protects a complete range of the arctic ecosystem.” ~ Dan Lipinski
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“I cannot in good conscience vote for final passage of legislation that would pave the way to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.” ~ Jim Ramstad
- “I can see now a vision emerging how Canada is going to profit in the future from our Arctic resources without destroying the environment on which it is all based.” ~ Brian Mulroney
- “For example, the Prime Minister earlier this year talked about the importance of the Arctic to our future. He’s right. A hundred years from now, the strength of Canada is going to be coming from our resources in the Arctic.” ~ Brian Mulroney
- “There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“Opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge stands to not only increase the United States’ oil reserves by nearly 50 percent, but it will create thousands of good U.S. jobs.” ~ Bob Ney
- “The Arctic has a call that is compelling. The distant mountains [of the Brooks Range in Alaska] make one want to go on and on over the next ridge and over the one beyond. The call is that of a wilderness known only to a few…This last American wilderness must remain sacrosanct.” ~ William O. Douglas
- “We should not use special budget procedures to jam through legislation to drill in the Arctic Refuge. This topic is too important to the public to address it in such a back-door manner. We should be having a full, open discussion of the issue during an energy debate.” ~ Russ Feingold
- “This fight against drilling in the Arctic Refuge is a fight about our principles. Its about standing up for our environment, our families and our future, and I wont give up this fight.” ~ John F. Kerry
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“The Arctic is the planet’s air conditioner and it’s starting to break down.” ~ Eban Goodstein
- “I don’t know what compassionate conservative means. Does it mean cutting kids out of after school programs, Does it mean drilling in the arctic wildlife refuge? Does it mean sending kids to Iraq without body armor that’s state of the art?” ~ John F. Kerry
- “You know, once something freezes, it’s solid. That’s the key to the arctic – they didn’t fear the cold, they made use of it.” ~ Wade Davis
- “Some have suggested that ideally there must be some international body that would treat areas like the Arctic as a global commerce, a bit like the way we treat the sea. It doesn’t belong to any particular country, but to all of us, but I’m not sure some of the powerful are ready for that sort of solution.” ~ Kofi Annan
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“A half-century after racing the Russians to the moon, the U.S. is barely suiting up in the international race to secure interests in the Arctic.” ~ Rick Larsen
- “The most important thing for people to know about the governance of the Arctic is that we have a chance now to act to maintain the integrity of the system or to lose it. To lose it means that we will dismember the vital systems that make the Arctic work. It’s not just a cost to the people who live there. It’s a cost to all people everywhere.” ~ Sylvia Earle
- “She was riding a bear! And the Aurora was swaying above them in golden arcs and loops, and all around was the bitter Arctic cold and the immense silence of the North.” ~ Philip Pullman
- “In Alaska, the beaches are slumping so much, people are having to move houses. In Tuktoyaktuk, the land is starting to go under water. The glaciers are melting and the permafrost is melting. There are new species of birds and fish and insects showing up. The Arctic is a barometer for the health of the world. If you want to know how healthy the world is, come to the Arctic and feel its pulse.” ~ Sheila Watt-Cloutier
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“We need to save the Arctic not because of the polar bears, and not because it is the most beautiful place in the world, but because our very survival depends upon it.” ~ Lewis Gordon.
- “The Arctic is a place that historically, during all preceding human history, has largely been an icy realm with an impact on ocean currents. That, in turn, influences the temperature of the planet. The Arctic is now vulnerable because of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, with a rate of melting that is stunning.” ~ Sylvia Earle
- “Researchers at the Naval Postgraduate School have told us that the entire Arctic ice cap may totally disappear in summer in as little as five years if nothing is done to curb emissions of greenhouse gas pollution.” ~ Al Gore
- “Nature confounds her summer distinctions at this season. The heavens seem to be nearer the earth. The elements are less reserved and distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. The day is but a Scandinavian night. The winter is an arctic summer.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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“For the first time in history, my community has had to use air conditioners. Imagine that, air conditioners in the Arctic.” ~ Sheila Watt-Cloutier
- “We deeply regret that some Senators are still willing to do Big Oil?s bidding, and we now turn to the House where the Arctic drilling scheme should be dead on arrival. Americans are clamoring for a clean Congress and a clean energy plan, but sadly they were shortchanged on both today.” ~ Carl Pope
- “For as long as I can remember, I have loved snow and ice. As a result, I have spent most of my life exploring the Arctic region. These journeys have brought such joy and beauty to my life that I have dedicated myself to helping preserve these wonderful frozen places. More than ever before, I am driven to share my passion for the Arctic, a region whose health and stability have far-reaching consequences for us all.” ~ Lonnie Dupre , Arctic quotes exploration
- “Canada regards herself as responsible to all mankind for the peculiar ecological balance that now exists so precariously in the water, ice and land areas of the Arctic archipelago. We do not doubt for a moment that the rest of the world would find us at fault, and hold us liable, should we fail to ensure adequate protection of that environment from pollution or artificial deterioration.” ~ Pierre Trudeau
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“The arctic loneliness of age.” ~ Silas Weir Mitchell
- “How far the gulf-stream of our youth may flow
Into the arctic regions of our lives,
Where little else than life itself survives.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - “Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.” ~ Rebecca Solnit
- “Moss grows where nothing else can grow. It grows on bricks. It grows on tree bark and roofing slate. It grows in the Arctic Circle and in the balmiest tropics; it also grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones. … It is a resurrection engine. A single clump of mosses can lie dormant and dry for forty years at a stretch, and then vault back again into life with a mere soaking of water.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert
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“If substantial methyl hydrate melt begins to occur in the Arctic Ocean basin, then the (carbon) accelerator will be jammed, and there will be nothing we can do to cut the speed of climate change.” ~ Mark Lynas
- “I think that I was slightly naive. I thought that if I showed people the beauty of the Arctic and the beauty of the polar bears that they would care so much that they would stand up and try to make a change.” ~ Lewis Gordon
- “Before we left, Grandmother talked a lot about the arctic night we would fly through. ‘Isn’t it a mystical word, “arctic”? Pure and quite hard. And meridians. Isn’t that pretty? We’re going to fly along them, faster than the light can follow us… Time won’t be able to catch us.” ~ Tove Jansson
- “I am shocked, truly shocked. I was in Siberia a few weeks ago, and I am now just back in from the field in Alaska. The permafrost is melting fast all over the Arctic, lakes are forming everywhere and methane is bubbling up out of them.” ~ Katey Walter
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“In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis. They’ll just ask, “So the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?”” ~ Bill McKibben
- “There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts, it never fails, and in the mightiest floods, it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream.” ~ Matthew Fontaine Maury , Arctic quotes cold
- “Every [Alaskan] has witnessed climate change over the past fifty years. Our winters are warmer, our summers are longer, and our Arctic Village shores, once protected by sea ice are eroding.” ~ Ray Metcalfe
- “The Arctic is a highway. The tree limit, the scarcity of trees, freed people to walk. Particularly in the wintertime. Which connected people physically, communicatively. And mythically. The long nights of winter free people to tell. And to listen.” ~ Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa
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“The polar bear for many has become a living symbol of the dangers of global warming. The powerful kings of the arctic are finding their habitat shrinking.” ~ Sam Champion
- “We are in a fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable.” ~ James Lovelock
- “The close relationships between the abrupt ups and downs of solar activity and of temperature that I have identified occur locally in coastal Greenland; regionally in the Arctic Pacific and north Atlantic; and hemispherically for the whole circum-Arctic, suggesting that changes in solar activity drive Arctic and perhaps even global climate.” ~ Willie Soon
- “Oh say, can you see, it’s really such a mess. Every inch of earth is a fighting nest. Giant pencial and lipstick tube shaped things, continue to rain and cause scream and pain, and the arctic stains from silver blue to bloody red.” ~ Jimi Hendrix
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“Some studies suggest that the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free by the end of the century.” ~ Jeff Goodell
- “If we drill the hell out of everything, including protected public lands and fragile regions like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, America can emerge as an ‘energy superpower.'” ~ Jeff Goodell
- “Much of the attention on oceans has portrayed oceans as a villain. Warm water strengthened Hurricane Katrina that pounded Louisiana. Rising sea level will flood islands and coastal areas. Or, we’re talking about new opportunities like a new shipping lane in the Arctic because of melting sea ice. These may be the obvious problems, but they’re probably not the biggest ones.” ~ Mark Powell
- “Your average knitter, obsessed as we are with the art form, is quickly going to begin producing far more in the way of warm things than are needed by even an arctic-bound knitter. Knitting breeds generosity, true…but perhaps in a hurry to avoid burying ourselves in hand-knits. There are only so many scarves one knitter can use.” ~ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee
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“I don’t know where this Arctic wind has come from but it’s freezing!” ~ Alan Green
- “I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.” ~ Edward Abbey
- “While endangering one of the most pristine areas in the world, drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would do nothing to make our country more energy independent.” ~ Tom Daschle
- “We thank those Senators, both Republican and Democrat, who stood firm against tremendous pressure from the Bush administration, pro-drilling members of Congress and their allies in the oil industry. They recognize that the budget is an inappropriate place to decide controversial national policy matters like America’s energy policy. We urge all members of Congress to remain steadfast in their belief that the vast, unspoiled wilderness of America?s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is more than a line item in the Federal Budget.” ~ Carl Pope
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“People might say, What’s so great about the Arctic Monkeys? I’ve never even seen them. Well, you’ve never seen God either. You’re gonna tell me he’s not awesome?” ~ Christian Finnegan
- “We’ve lost half the summer sea ice in the Arctic. We’ve wiped out an enormous percentage of the world’s coral reefs. We see huge changes in the planet’s hydrology already, the cycles of drought and flood both amped up because warm air holds more water vapor than cold. These things are happening with a one-degree increase and going to two degrees won’t be twice as bad, the increase in damage won’t be linear, it most certainly will be exponential. So it was precisely the wrong moment to elect Trump.” ~ Bill McKibben
- “Virtually, Finnish woods are stripped so bare, so sold out and first and foremost, so long way off from genuine diverse natural forest, that the resources of language will not permit excessive words. Finnish forest economy has been compared to the ravaging of rain forests. Nevertheless, the noteworthy difference is that there is a half or two thirds left from rain forests, but from Finnish forests there is left – excluding arctic Lapland – 0,6 per cent.” ~ Pentti Linkola
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“It’s a great life, and Margaret and I are going to stay put above the Arctic Circle where we’re happy.” ~ Bern Will Brown
- “Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.” ~ Norman Maclean
- “There is one distinctive charm about fishing – its fascinations will stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial river, with the surrounding atmosphere forty-five percent mosquito, and if you are fishing you will enjoy yourself.” ~ Mary Kingsley
