Stefansson Quotes

#1. What is the difference between unethical and ethical advertising? Unethical advertising uses falsehoods to deceive the public; ethical advertising uses truth to deceive the public.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#2. A land may be said to be discovered the first time a European, presumably an Englishman, sets foot on it.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#3. Funny, no matter how fast one travels, the past is just a moment, just a thought away.

Van Heerling

#4. Hell is having arms but no one to embrace.

Jon Kalman Stefansson

#5. The philosophers of the Middle Ages demonstrated both that the Earth did not exist and also that it was flat. Today they are still arguing about whether the world exists, but they no longer dispute about whether it is flat.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#6. When man spoke his first word he became the thread that quivers eternally between evil and goodness, Heaven and Hell.

Jon Kalman Stefansson

#7. False modesty is better than none.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#8. I think you forget that I'm still alive. It's like you don't expect me to keep on existing now that I'm not in your life every day.

Rachel Higginson

#9. The most striking contradiction of our civilization is the fundamental reverence for truth which we profess and the thorough-going disregard for it which we practice.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#10. Adventure is a sign of incompetence.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#11. I know each new story is better than the last.

Dan Alatorre

#12. There are two kinds of Arctic problems, the imaginary and the real. Of the two, the imaginary are the most real.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#13. Turn wishful thinking into positive action. Those who take a proactive stance in their lives tend to have an ample supply of joy and pleasure

Cheryl Saban

#14. Bardur and the boy had leaned back a bit and looked at the sparkling sky that makes us humble and powerful at once and seems sometimes to speak to us. What is says carefully cleanses old wounds.

Jon Kalman Stefansson

#15. Mathematicians also make terrible salesmen. Physicists can discover the same thing as a mathematician and say 'We've discovered a great new law of nature. Give us a billion dollars.' And if it doesn't change the world, then they say, 'There's an even deeper thing. Give us another billion dollars.'

Gian-Carlo Rota

#16. Having an adventure shows that someone is incompetent, that something has gone wrong. An adventure is interesting enough - in retrospect. Especially to the person who didn't have it.

Vilhjalmur Stefansson

#17. He who has no dream is in danger

Jon Kalman Stefansson

#18. We Icelanders are an excellent animal model for humans. This is exactly the way you find common disease genes.

Kari Stefansson