and yet even today we hear people ask in surprise: What is the use of these voyages of exploration? What good do they do us?
Little brains, I always answer to myself, have only room for thoughts of bread and butter.
—Roald Amundsen, The South Pole
In spite of the long time I had spent in the Arctic I was always longing to go back again. Kipling says that the man who hears the East a-calling never hears anything else,
but the Arctic and the ice call just as strongly to some people.
—Helmer Hanssen, Voyages of a Modern Viking
No man more than the explorer is tempted to adopt the doctrine of ends justifying the means. An explorer soon discovers that the world is full of busybodies righteously ready
to save him, as they probably think, from himself. The only way to deal with such people is to agree to their terms and then go ahead as one pleases. There are enough legitimate discouragements in
the world without submitting to artificial ones.
—Lincoln Ellsworth, Beyond Horizons