The mind of a horse is a very limited concern, relying almost entirely upon memory. He rivals our politicians in that he has little real intellect. Consequently, when the pony was faced with conditions different from those to which he was accustomed, he showed little adaptability.

In Antarctica you get to know people so well that in comparison you do not seem to know the people in civilization at all.

For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a winter journey, give me Wilson; for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen; and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.

And I tell you, if you have the desire for knowledge and the power to give it physical expression, go out and explore.

We traveled for science: those three small embryos from Cape Crozier, that weight of fossils from Barkley Island, and that mass of material less spectacular but gathered just as carefully hour by hour, in wind and drift, darkness and cold, was striven for in order that the world may have a little more knowledge, that it may build on what it knows instead of on what it thinks.

Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin.

Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised.