60 Best Solo Travel Quotes That Will Inspire Adventure Alone
These different and inspiring solo travel quotes from authors, poets, philosophers, and historical figures will spark wanderlust and inspire your next adventure!
Thinking of traveling alone and searching for some inspiring solo travel quotes to motivate you to finally take the leap? One of the numerous benefits of solo travel is that it provides unique opportunities to get to know yourself deeply and what you want out of life.
Table of Contents
- Solo Travel Quotes about Taking the Risk
- Travel Quotes about Fulfilling Your Soul
- Solo Travel Quotes about the Gift of Solitude
- Travel Quotes about Personal Growth and Change
- Travel Quotes about Living a Full Life
1. “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the Earth all one’s lifetime.”
Mark Twain
People often develop prejudices or narrow views of the world when they remain confined to their own familiar surroundings and keep the same familiar company. Their local customs, beliefs, and experiences limit their lives and worldviews. Exposing oneself to diverse cultures, people, and lifestyles beyond familiar environments helps people gain a more comprehensive understanding of the world.
Traveling helps people develop a more empathetic and tolerant attitude towards others by teaching them to appreciate the diversity of humanity. It helps people understand that, despite cultural differences, we all share emotions, aspirations, and values. This firsthand experience of encountering different cultures fosters open-mindedness, compassion, and a more inclusive worldview. There are numerous other benefits of solo travel in addition to fostering greater understanding, compassion, and a broader worldview.
2. “The most dangerous risk of all- the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.”
Randy Komisar
It’s a complete scam spending the majority of your life doing things you don’t want to do, with the idea that you will squeeze in an entire life’s worth of experience, happiness, and fulfillment after retirement. Do not wait until you are old and tired to live the life you always wanted, because you’re not guaranteed to make it there. You could tragically die young, or your health and mobility could be greatly reduced, preventing you from doing the things you always wanted. We get one life, don’t gamble away your opportunity to be happy now with the hope that you can finally achieve happiness later.
3. “A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking, because its trust is not on the branch but on its own wings.”
Charlie Wardle
4. “Without bravery, they would never be able to realize the vaulting scope of their own capacities. Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known. Without bravery, their lives would remain small, far smaller than they probably wanted their lives to be.”
Jack Gilbert
It’s scary to set out for exotic places by yourself, but you just have to do it scared. Bravery can only exist when you do something despite the fear and uncertainty. There is no bravery without fear. Bravery is something that you have to teach yourself by doing it. There is no substitute for it. The more you push yourself outside your comfort zone, the more confident and self-assured you will become. Increased confidence, empowerment, and independence are just a few of the numerous benefits of solo travel.
5. “Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave.”
Cheryl Strayed
The quote above originates from Cheryl Strayed’s remarkable memoir ‘Wild,’ depicting a woman embarking on a solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail. Western media often portrays the world as a vast landscape of danger and tragedy, particularly insinuating that women shouldn’t venture out into the unknown by themselves because of all the dangerous… wait for it…. men.
It is true that the biggest threat to solo female travel are men, but that is also true in your home country. There isn’t much of a difference between navigating your home country alone and navigating a foreign country alone in terms of dangerous men (because they are worldwide), so familiarize yourself with some safety tips and use common sense that all women are familiar with and you’ll be fine.
6. “Live from your imagination. Honor your own discontent. Do not dismiss, bury it, deflect it, deny it, blame it on someone else, or tell yourself to shut up and be grateful. She heard her knowing whisper “not this”, and she admitted to herself that she heard it. She sat with it for a while. When she was ready to move from “not this” to “this”, she dared to call upon her imagination to tell her the story she was born to tell with her life. She dreamed up her truest, most beautiful life.”
Gennon Doyle
7. “I was able to imagine a truer, more beautiful existence for myself than the one I was living. And then conjured up the courage to make real what I have imagined.”
Gennon Doyle
If you’re like me, you’re not exactly thrilled to be working 40+ hours a week for someone else and barely able to pay your rent and buy groceries…. for the rest of your life. I constantly felt stressed, angry, tired, and that everything was utterly pointless. What’s the point of living if you’re gonna spend your whole life feeling that way? Use those feelings as fuel for the fire to imagine your ideal life, and then conjure up the courage to go after it.
8. “It is far better to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.”
Thomas H. Huxley
The process of self discovery and the pursuit of happiness isn’t linear. There will be days when you feel lost, lonely, and anxious. However, you will feel all of those things in a “normal life” too. Those are inescapable aspects of the Human Experience. Good days and bad days are all part of any journey you decide to take, so you might as well choose freedom and independence.
9. “After all, one of the burning desires behind this trip was to escape these infuriating skirmishes with the 21st century bureaucracy and incompetence that grind us down every day. I was seeking some authenticity, some down ‘n’ dirty reality.”
Lois Pryce
One of the never-talked-about benefits of travel is never having to go to the DMV. Or run errands. There’s so much more time for activities!
10. “The trip changed me. I emerged at the end of it not just a different person; I felt like a visitor to my former world.”
Sara Seager
This is one of my all-time favorite solo travel quotes from Sara Seager’s memoir The Smallest Lights in the Universe. It hit me like a ton of bricks the first time I read it. This is exactly how I felt after my first long solo trip. Solo travel will absolutely change you, if you let it. And it just might change you in ways you never expected. And you might not realize the extent of the changes until you travel back home for a visit.
Solo Travel Quotes about Taking the Risk
- “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” – John A. Shedd
- “Do not fear failure, but please, be terrified of regret.” – Deshauna Barber
- “You have exactly one life in which to do everything you’ll ever do. Act accordingly.” – Colin Wright
- “Take the risk, or lose the chance” – Unknown
- “There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – C.S. Lewis
- “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
- “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Andre Gorde
- “Don’t be scared to walk alone. Don’t be scared to like it.” – John Mayer
- “Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith.” – Margaret Shepard
- “People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” – Paulo Coelho
Travel Quotes about Fulfilling Your Soul
- “You can’t control the past, but you can control where you go next.” – Kirsten Hubbard
- “If you don’t get out of the box you’ve been raised in, you won’t understand how much bigger the world is.” – Angelina Jolie
- “I travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape me.” – Unknown
- “Jobs fill your pockets, but adventures fill your soul.” Jaime Lyn Beatty
- “I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
- “It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn.” – Anthony Bourdain
- “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
- “Not I, nor anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.” – Walt Whitman
- “The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine
- “The solo traveler is not looking for an escape from life, but rather a way to experience it more fully.” – Shane Dallas
Solo Travel Quotes about the Gift of Solitude
- “The inner journey of travel is intensified by solitude.” – Paul Theroux
- “If you make friends with yourself you will never be alone.” Maxwell Maltz
- “I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “I wondered why it was that places are so much lovelier when one is alone.” – Daphne Du Maurier
- “The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “If companionship is a mandate for all of our experiences, then we will miss out on many of life’s blessings.” – Gina Greenlee
- “There are some places in life where you can only go alone. Embrace the beauty of your solo journey.” – Mandy Hale
- “Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” – Henry Rollins
- “The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.” – Alan Ashley-Pitt
- “Traveling alone makes it easier to be yourself.” – Charles Bukowski
- “It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially molded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others. Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion’s questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity.” – Alain de Botton
Travel Quotes about Personal Growth and Change
- “I learned my strengths and my weaknesses. I experienced the exhilaration of the ups and the despairs of the lows and most of the feelings in between… I learned courage and I learned it myself.” – Ann Stirk
- “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s OK. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.” – Anthony Bourdain
- “Great people do things before they’re ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you’re afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that — that’s what life is. You might be really good.” – Amy Poehler
- “I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on earth. Then I ask myself the same question.” – Harun Yahya
- “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.” -Jack Kerouac
- “What good are wings without the courage to fly?” – Harper Lee
- “Travel doesn’t become adventure until you leave yourself behind.” – Marty Rubin
- “A mind that is stretched by new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
- “I have traveled many roads in my life. Some were imbued with pain and I needed to avert my gaze. Others were so beautiful that I would have remained there forever. But always, at some point in these routes, I reached a place where I encountered myself.” – Pablo Holmberg
Travel Quotes about Living a Full Life
- “You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read. That is why you must look at the skies. That is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
- “To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson
- “Traveling alone makes you vulnerable to being moved by things.”- Marlowe Granados
- “Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time” – Steven Wright
- “Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.” – Robin S. Sharma
- “People wait all week for Friday, all year for summer, all life for happiness.” – Unknown
- “Do you really want to look back on your life and see how wonderful it could have been had you not been afraid to live it?” – Caroline Myss
- “Life shrinks or expands in proportion with one’s courage.” – Anaïs Nin
- “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.” – Helen Keller
- “Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity; we have only this moment — sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake.” – Marie Beyon Ray
Now that you’re sufficiently inspired by these solo travel quotes, go book that trip!
I basically wrote a short novel when I created the The Ultimate Guide to Solo Female Travel, which is a basically a How-To manual for being a solo female traveler. It provides a wealth of information from planning a trip, health and safety, menstruation, dating, insurance, post-travel reflection, and much, much more.
