Rafting Quotes:

The public must retain control of the great waterways. It is essential that any permit to obstruct them for reasons and on conditions that seem good at the moment should be subject to revision when changed conditions demand.

- Theodore Roosevelt

source: Theodore Roosevelt (1910). “Works: Presidential addresses and state papers, Dec. 3, 1901, June 1910, and European addresses. 8 v”

topic: Rafting, Essentials, Demand

You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.

- Mark Twain

source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ch. 18 (1884)

topic: Rafting, Easy, Transport, Mississippi River, Huckleberry

If you've ever tried ba travel, I wouldn't recommend it-- unless of course you fancy turning into a phantom chicken and rafting uncontrollably through the currents of the Duat.

- Rick Riordan

source: Rick Riordan (2011). “The Throne of Fire (The Kane Chronicles Book 2): The Throne of Fire”, p.37, Penguin UK

topic: Rafting, Fancy, Phantoms

TV's like whitewater rafting: Without rocks, there wouldn't be rapids, and it wouldn't be as much fun.

- Joss Whedon

topic: Fun, Rocks, Rafting

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.

- Jawaharlal Nehru

topic: Inspirational, Life, Beauty, Indian, Solo Travel

The first river you paddle runs through the rest of your life. It bubbles up in pools and eddies to remind you who you are.

- Lynn Culbreath Noel

topic: Running, Memorable, Rivers, Water Is Life, White Water

While you're doing it, you don't really know what you're doing.

- Tony Curtis

source: Interview with Randy Shulman, www.metroweekly.com. August 21, 2002.

topic: Rafting

A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.

- Laura Gilpin

topic: Moving, Rivers, Water, Lakes And Rivers, Moving Water

Wild rivers are earth's renegades, defying gravity, dancing to their own tunes, resisting the authority of humans, always chipping away, and eventually always winning.

- Richard Bangs

topic: Winning, Rivers, Dancing, Renegades, Defying Gravity

When you put your hand in a flowing stream, you touch the last that has gone before and the first of what is still to come.

- Leonardo da Vinci

topic: Hands, Water, Gone, Water Is Life, Water Resources

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.

- Norman Maclean

source: "A River Runs Through It" (1976)

topic: Running, Rivers, Lakes And Rivers, Water Fountain, Water Is Life

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

- A. A. Milne

topic: Buddhist, Rivers, Perserverance, Keep Patience, Fluff

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

topic: Travel, Inspirational Life, Moving, Solo Travel, Journey Inspirational

I have never seen a river that I could not love. Moving water... has a fascinating vitality. It has power and grace and associations. It has a thousand colors and a thousand shapes, yet it follows laws so definite that the tiniest streamlet is an exact replica of a great river.

- Roderick Haig-Brown

topic: Rain, Moving, Memorable, Moving Water, Water Fountain

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.

- Kenneth Grahame

source: TheWind in theWillows ch. 1 (1908)

topic: Witty, Sailing, Half, Mariners, Wind In The Willows

What makes a river so restful to people is that it doesn't have any doubt it is sure to get where it is going, and it doesn't want to go anywhere else.

- Hal Boyle

topic: Memorable, Rivers, People, White Water, Rafting

The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us. Thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.

- John Muir

source: John Muir, Linnie Marsh Wolfe (1979). “John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir”, p.92, Univ of Wisconsin Press

topic: Song, Flower, Heart, Sun Shines, Love And Nature

The care of rivers is not a question of rivers but of the human heart.

- Shozo Tanaka

topic: Heart, Rivers, Water, Rafting

Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.

- Ben Hecht

topic: Safety, Justice, Mind, Rafting

Swift or smooth, broad as the Hudson or narrow enough to scrape your gunwales, every river is a world of its own, unique in pattern and personality. Each mile on a river will take you further from home than a hundred miles on a road.

- Bob Marshall

topic: Home, Memorable, Unique, White Water, Rafting

Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy.

- Edward Abbey

topic: Night, Rivers, Space, Flowing River, Rafting

Clean water is not an expenditure of Federal funds; clean water is an investment in the future of our country.

- Bud Shuster

topic: Country, Water, Investment, Clean Water, Drinking Water

We have that illusion that we are 'deciding' what to make a character do, in order to 'convey our message' or something like that. But, at least in my experience, you are often more like a river-rafting guide who's been paid a bonus to purposely steer your clients into the roughest possible water.

- George Saunders

source: "George Saunders’s Wild Ride" by Deborah Treisman, www.newyorker.com. December 12, 2010.

topic: Character, Order, Rivers, Rafting

I've done plenty of daredeviling - from white-water rafting to bungee jumping. But I think the most fearless was hosting the Emmy Awards. It was overwhelming, and I definitely had to leave fear at the door.

- Neil Patrick Harris

topic: Thinking, Awards, Jumping, Bungee, White Water

I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes hills and streams and plains the mountains over our land and nature's wealth deep under the earth are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

topic: Memorable, Lakes, Land, Lakes And Rivers, Land And Water

. . . the time has also come to identify and preserve free-flowing stretches of our great rivers before growth and development make the beauty of the unspoiled waterway a memory.

- Lyndon B. Johnson

topic: Memories, Rivers, Growth, White Water, Flowing River

I'd say that, in addition to actually taking my brother and sister and I camping and hiking and river rafting all our lives and introducing us to the power of natural landscapes, his [my father's] biggest impact on my thinking has been to always argue that the "spiritual case for Nature" was not going to outweigh the needs of 7 billion people and to insist that law, science and economics were the critical frameworks through which we had to defend the value of nature.

- Edward Norton

topic: Spiritual, Brother, Father, Rafting

Whenever I finish a book, I go off and have some kind of adventure. Having had an adventure in my writing chair or on my writing sofa, an internal adventure, then I need to balance that off with an external adventure, so I'll go tramping through Africa or whitewater rafting or float to Hawaii in a martini shaker or something.

- Tom Robbins

topic: Book, Adventure, Writing, Rafting, Shakers

I come from a family of conservation activists, and so I've had a strong connection to nature all my life. My father has been a leader within the movement for over thirty years and has taught most of what I know about environmental conservation. While he would always take me hiking, camping, and rafting, he also taught me that the spiritual value of the outdoors alone is not enough to save nature against economic interests.

- Edward Norton

topic: Spiritual, Strong, Father, Strong Connection, Rafting

Yet for all the depression no one ever quit. When someone quit, we couldn't believe it. 'I'm becoming a rafting instructor on the Colorado River,' they said. 'I'm touring college towns with my garage band.' We were dumbfounded. It was like they were from another planet. Where had they found the derring-do? What would they do about car payments? We got together for going away drinks on their final day and tried to hide our envy while reminding ourselves that we still had the freedom and luxury to shop indiscriminately.

- Joshua Ferris

topic: Believe, College, Luxury, Car Payments, Colorado River

When you write your first novel you don't really know what you're doing. There may be writers out there who are brilliant, incisive and in control from their first 'Once upon a time'. I'm not one of them. Every once upon a time for me is another experience of white-water rafting in a leaky inner tube. And I have this theory that while the Story Council has its faults, it does have some idea that if books are going to get written, authors have to be able to write them.

- Robin McKinley

topic: Book, Writing, Ideas, White Water, Rafting

The thought of bringing a cake into a dance music show is a bizarre one. The idea of rafting on top of people is just as bizarre as well. And I think whenever something bizarre comes into play, it immediately becomes an easy target. And for those reasons, I know that I have been the target of criticism.

- Steve Aoki

topic: Thinking, Cake, Play, Rafting, Dance Music

After you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of earth? What one moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet. What's your takeaway? Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive.

- Douglas Coupland

source: "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture". Book by Douglas Coupland, March 15, 1991.

topic: Memories, Elephants, White, Best Memories, White Water

The truth is, almost nobody wants to experience real nature. What people want is to spend a week or two in a cabin in the woods, with screens on the windows. They want a simplified life for a while, without all their stuff. Or a nice river rafting trip for a few days, with somebody else doing the cooking. Nobody wants to go back to nature in any real way, and nobody does. It's all talk

- Michael Crichton

topic: Real, Nice, Two, Cabin In The Woods, Rafting