Richard E. Byrd Quotes

What people think about you is not supposed to matter much, so long as you yourself know where the truth lies; but I have found out, as have others who move in and out of newspaper headlines, that on occasion it can matter a good deal. For once you enter the world of headlines you learn there is not one truth but two: the one which you know from the facts; and the one which the public, or at any rate a highly imaginative part of the public, acquires by osmosis.

Solitude is greater than I anticipated. My sense of values is changing, and many things which before were in solution in my mind now seem to be crystallizing. I am better able to tell what in the world is wheat for me and what is chaff. In fact, my definition of success itself is changing.

He who may have failed back there has his chance to make good here;

I am hopeful that Antarctica in its symbolic robe of white will shine forth as a continent of peace as nations working together there in the cause of science set an example of international cooperation.

Scientists say that it is impossible for any life to exist deep underground, that the Earth is solid through and through. However, at this point in time, no scientist has actually ever been far enough underground to prove their theories.

This book is the account of a personal experience — so personal that for four years I could not bring myself to write it. It is different from anything else I have ever written. My other books have been factual, impersonal narratives of my expeditions and flights. This book, on the other hand, is the story of an experience which was in considerable part subjective. I very nearly died before it was over.

If the expedition had failed, which it might well have done with all hope centered in just one plane, I should still be trying to pay back my obligations.

He who may have failed back there has his chance to make good here; and he will not be judged by the position he holds so
much as by the way he plays the game and does his job, however humble it may be....

Next morning, when I got up, the inside temperature was 300 below zero. The new arrangement was working quite nicely indeed.

The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was as rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.

Next morning, when I got up, the inside temperature was 30° below zero. The new arrangement was working quite nicely indeed.

I paused to listen to the silence. My breath, crystallized as it passed my cheeks, drifted on a breeze gentler than a whisper. The wind vane pointed toward the South Pole. Presently the wind cups ceased their gentle turning as the cold killed the breeze. My frozen breath hung like a cloud overhead. The day was dying, the night being born — but with great peace. Here were the imponderable processes and forces of the cosmos, harmonious and soundless. Harmony, that was it! That was what came out of the silence — a gentle rhythm, the strain of a perfect chord, the music of the spheres, perhaps. It was enough to catch that rhythm, momentarily to be myself a part of it. In that instant I could feel no doubt of man's oneness with the universe. The conviction came that the rhythm was too orderly, too harmonious, too perfect to be a product of blind chance — that, therefore, there must be purpose in the whole and that man was part of that whole and not an accidental offshoot. It was a feeling that transcended reason; that went to the heart of man's despair and found it groundless. The universe was a cosmos, not a chaos; man was rightfully a part of that cosmos as were the day and night.

Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.

Behind every legend, strange to say, can be found a kernel of truth, a group of facts around which the legend was built.

Just as the long night of the Arctic ends, the brilliant sunshine of Truth shall come again... and those who are of darkness shall fall in its Light... FOR I HAVE SEEN THAT LAND BEYOND THE POLE, THAT CENTER OF THE GREAT UNKNOWN.