Rolf Potts Quotes

Quotes about:

Home Reality Simplicity Travel Values

I think your travels get better when you stop showcasing your journey to others and begin to live it, quietly and joyfully.

Rolf Potts

Journey, Thinking, Get Better

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For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead — out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need — we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts.

Rolf Potts

Dream, Fashion, Land

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.9, Ballantine Books

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Travel compels you to discover your spiritual side by elimination: Without all the rituals, routines and possessions that give your life meaning at home, you're forced to look for meaning within yourself Indeed, if travel is a process that helps you 'find yourself', it's because it leaves you with nothing to hide behind - it yanks you out from the realm of rehearsed responses and dull comforts, and forces you into the present. Here, in the fleeting moment, you are left to improvise, to come to terms with your raw, true self.

Rolf Potts

Spiritual, Home, Self

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Time is the truest form of wealth. And the beauty is, we are all born equally rich in time.

Rolf Potts

Wealth, Rich, Form

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If in doubt, just walk until your day becomes interesting.

Rolf Potts

Interesting, Doubt, Walks

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What better way to discover the unknown than to follow your instincts instead of your plans.

Rolf Potts

Way, Instinct, Plans

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.125, Ballantine Books

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Long-term travel doesn't require a massive bundle of cash; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.

Rolf Potts

Inspirational, Travel, Long

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.10, Ballantine Books

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Indeed, the most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love with a place are rarely the features that took you there.

Rolf Potts

Falling In Love, Quality, Vivid

Rolf Potts (2003). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-term World Travel”, Random House Digital, Inc.

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Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time of your life. Vagabonding is about taking control of your circumstances instead of passively waiting for them to decide your fate.

Rolf Potts

Fate, Waiting, Circumstances

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.17, Ballantine Books

16 Copy quote
Begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility.

Rolf Potts

Looks, Maps, Possibility

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.17, Ballantine Books

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there is still an overwhelming social compulsion-an insanity of consensus, if you will-to get rich from life rather than live richly, to “do well” in the world instead of living well.

Rolf Potts

Insanity, World, Rich

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.16, Ballantine Books

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Thus, the question of how and when to start vagabonding is not really a question at all. Vagabonding starts now. Even if the practical reality of travel is still months or years away, vagabonding begins the moment you stop making excuses, start saving money, and begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility. From here, the reality of vagabonding comes into sharper focus as you adjust your worldview and begin to embrace the exhilarating uncertainty that true travel promises.

Rolf Potts

Reality, Years, Focus

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The simple willingness to improvise is more vital, in the long run, than research.

Rolf Potts

Running, Simple, Long

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.36, Ballantine Books

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The goal of preparation then is not knowing exactly where you'll go but being confident nonetheless that you'll get there.

Rolf Potts

Life, Knowing, Goal

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.36, Ballantine Books

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The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we're too poor to buy our freedom.

Rolf Potts

Thinking, Needs, Cash

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.10, Ballantine Books

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The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home -- and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.

Rolf Potts

Country, Travel, Home

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If you wander with open eyes and simple curiosity, you'll discover a much richer pleasure - the simple feeling of possibility that hums from every direction as you move from place to place.

Rolf Potts

Moving, Eye, Simple

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.82, Ballantine Books

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Of all the adventures and challenges that wait on the vagabonding road, the most difficult can be the act of coming home.

Rolf Potts

Home, Adventure, Waiting

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.184, Ballantine Books

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In this way, we end up spending (as Thoreau put it) “the best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it.” We'd love to drop all and explore the world outside, we tell ourselves, but the time never seems right. Thus, given an unlimited amount of choices, we make none. Settling into our lives, we get so obsessed with holding on to our domestic certainties that we forget why we desired them in the first place.

Rolf Potts

Order, Choices, Liberty

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At times, the biggest challenge in embracing simplicity will be the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it, since private sacrifice doesn't garner much attention in the frenetic world of mass culture.

Rolf Potts

Sacrifice, Mass Culture, Simplicity

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.15, Ballantine Books

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Vagabonding is an attitude — a friendly interest in people, places, and things that makes a person an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word.

Rolf Potts

Attitude, People, Friendly

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.11, Ballantine Books

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Travel, I was coming to realize, was a metaphor not only for the countless options life offers but also for the fact that choosing one option reduces you to the parameters of that choice. Thus, in knowing my possibilities, I also knew my limitations.

Rolf Potts

Knowing, Choices, Facts

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.158, Ballantine Books

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Vagabonding is about not merely reallotting a portion of your life for travel but rediscovering the entire concept of time.

Rolf Potts

Portions, Concept Of Time, Concepts

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.74, Ballantine Books

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Contrary to popular stereotypes, seeking simplicity doesn't require that you become a monk, a subsistence forager, or a wild-eyed revolutionary. Nor does it mean that you must unconditionally avoid the role of consumer. Rather, simplicity merely requires a bit of personal sacrifice: an adjustment of your habits and routines within consumer society itself.

Rolf Potts

Mean, Sacrifice, Simplicity

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Long-term travel isn’t about being a college student; it’s about being a student of daily life. Long-term travel isn’t an act of rebellion against society; it’s an act of common sense within society. Long-term travel doesn’t require a massive “bundle of cash”; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.

Rolf Potts

College, Long, Common Sense

Rolf Potts (2002). “Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”, p.10, Ballantine Books

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Born: October 13, 1970
Occupation: Writer
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