I love road trips and am always ready to pack up the car, pull out a map, and start an adventure. These road trip quotes might just inspire you to do the same.
Not all of these sayings were originally quotes about road trips, but, all the same, they are meant to make you think, make you laugh, or to inspire you to hit the road and plan your next journey.
From funny road trip quotes to serious ones, family road trip quotes to ones perfect for the solo traveler, there is plenty of inspiration behind every word. Read on and you just might find your new favorite road quotes.
50 Best Road Trip Quotes to Inspire Your Adventures:
1.
“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.”
Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road
2.
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
3.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
4.
“Because the greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way.”
Emma Chase, Tamed
5.
“That’s why I love road trips, dude. It’s like doing something without actually doing anything.”
John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
6.
“Roads are a record of those who have gone before.”
Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
7.
“When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.”
Charles de Lint, Greenmantle
8.
“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take.”
Angela N. Blount, Once Upon an Ever After
9.
“Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere”
Orhan Pamuk, The New Life
10.
“I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
Robert Louis Stevenson, Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes
11.
“Life is a long, bumpy road, but that makes for an exciting ride. It’s OK to map out your future… but do it in pencil.”
Jon Bon Jovi
The full Jon Bon Jovi quote comes from a commencement ceremony for the Rutgers University–Camden Class of 2015 in which he received an honorary degree: “Life is a long, bumpy road, but that makes for an exciting ride. Choose a direction and if the road turns – turn! If there is a fork in the road – take it! It’s OK to map out your future… but do it in pencil.” (Source)
12.
“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
13.
“Still, round the corner, there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
14.
“One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”
Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
This Henry Miller quote is often misquoted as “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things”. (Source)
15.
“Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle
16.
“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Yogi Berra
(Context)
17.
“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote, To travel is to live.”
Hans Christian Andersen, The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography
18.
“If you make the mistake of looking back too much, you aren’t focused enough on the road in front of you.”
Brad Paisley, American country music singer and songwriter
While Brad Paisley said this in an interview with Country Aircheck while talking about why he keeps his awards at his parents’ house, it still makes for a good road trip quote. (Source)
19.
“When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”
William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways
20.
“Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.”
Elizabeth Berg, The Year of Pleasures
21.
“People don’t take trips—trips take people.”
John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
22.
“The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous and absolutely liberating.”
Aaron Lauritsen, 100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip
23.
“Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter.”
Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
24.
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
Jack Kerouac, On the Road
25.
“The biggest adventure you can ever take is to live the life of your dreams.”
Oprah Winfrey
(Source)
26.
“I think I deserve something beautiful.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
27.
“Sometimes, the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”
Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld, The Baby Shower [S02E10]
28.
“Make voyages. Attempt them. There’s nothing else.”
Tennesse Williams, Camino Real
29.
“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”
Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 7: 1966-1974
30.
“Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself.”
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
31.
“The world is full of wonderful things you haven’t seen yet. Don’t ever give up on the chance of seeing them.”
J.K. Rowling
(Source)
32.
“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving.”
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
33.
“We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets
34.
“I love road trips. You get into this Zen rhythm; throw the sense of time out the window.”
Miriam Toews
(Source)
35.
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
36.
“Mileage craziness is a serious condition that exists in many forms. It can hit unsuspecting travelers while driving cars, motorcycles, riding in planes, crossing the country on bicycles or on foot. The symptoms may lead to obsessively placing more importance on how many miles are traveled than on the real reason for the traveling…On foot, in a van, on a fleet motorcycle or on a bicycle, a person must be very careful not to become overly concerned with arriving.”
Peter Jenkins, A Walk Across America
37.
“I love the way music inside a car makes you feel invisible; if you play the stereo at max volume, it’s almost like the other people can’t see into your vehicle. It tints your windows, somehow.”
Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story
38.
“Road trips required a couple of things: a well-balanced diet of caffeine, salt and sugar and an excellent selection of tunes—oh, and directions.”
Jenn McKinlay, Books Can Be Deceiving
39.
“To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world. You are surrounded by adventure. You have no idea of what is in store for you, but you will, if you are wise and know the art of travel, let yourself go on the stream of the unknown and accept whatever comes in the spirit in which the gods may offer it.”
Freya Stark, Baghdad Sketches
40.
“And just like that, we’re on our way to everywhere”
Emery Lord, Open Road Summer
41.
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
42.
“A road trip is a way for the whole family to spend time together and annoy each other in interesting new places.”
Tom Lichtenheld, Everything I Know About Cars
43.
“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.”
Jack Kerouac, On the Road: the Original Scroll
44.
“You know more of a road by having travelled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.”
William Hazlitt, On The Conduct of Life
45.
“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey.”
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
46.
“Look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.”
Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
47.
“The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.”
Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel
48.
“I just go with the flow, I follow the yellow brick road. I don’t know where it’s going to lead me, but I follow it.”
Grace Jones
(Source)
49.
“I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.”
Paulo Coelho, Aleph
50.
“See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.”
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Often Misquoted Road Trip Quotes
There are a lot of road trip and travel quotes out there that sound perfectly inspirational…but are actually just plain wrong.
One wildly popular road trip quote you might see on Pinterest or shared on social media is this one:
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
Lewis Carroll
But this popular phrase never actually appears in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.
It was most likely paraphrased from this passage in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and passed off as an inspirational travel quote:
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
Alice: …So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.
Here’s another often misidentified road trip quote:
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
That travel quote is often attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but there is no evidence he ever said such, and it might actually be by Muriel Strode.
Also, be wary of quotes from ancient philosophers , like Confucius. Many Confucius quotes have been made up or falsely contributed. A popular quote about travel that’s shared is:
“Roads were made for journeys, not destinations.”
Confucius
But outside decorative pillows on Etsy and motivational posters, I couldn’t find anything that linked that saying to him as the source. In fact, in the A. Charles Muller translation of The Analects of Confucius he is quoted as saying, “If you do travel, you should have a precise destination” (Source), which is the opposite sentiment to the much-shared quote,
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