Quotes About National Geographic

“If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical constants occurring in these laws are finally expressed through the four independent basic constants, we will be able to say that physical science has reached its end, that no excitement is left in further explorations, and that all that remains to a physicist is either tedious work on minor details or the self-educational study and adoration of the magnificence of the completed system. At that stage physical science will enter from the epoch of Columbus and Magellan into the epoch of the National Geographic Magazine!”

— George Gamow

“This was like being in one of those National Geographic magazines. We were among the natives now.”

— Brandi Salazar

“While National Geographic magazine had given me a taste of the world, the three-dimensional details of this moment - the tickle of the rain drops, the suck sound of my feet in the mud, the challenge of getting photographs of the monkeys, my immature urge to make the driver wait even longer because he was annoying - would feed me for years to come.”

— Kristine K. Stevens

“Did you hear about the recently discovered temple in the Sudan ?"
I stared at him. "Yeah. I'm a regular reader of National Geographic."
Ol' Frankie's brows quirked. "You wield sarcasm, madam, as well as a master swordsman does."
"Gee, thanks." I smiled at him and batted my lashes.
Quit flirting . Patrick flicked the command into my head. He sounded half-annoyed, half-amused.
I'm not flirting.
Quit being cute and likeable.
An impossible request. I've always been too adorable for words.”

— Michele Bardsley

“In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog's master whispers in the dog's ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog's soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.
I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.
I am ready.”

— Garth Stein

“I doubt taking in a sullen, bitter, teenage girl with more issues than National Geographic is at the center of the vision board for a single woman in her early thirties.”

— Katja Millay

“And she could be depressed if she wanted to be, she could sit and watch Dogs with Jobs on the National Geographic Channel and eat her way through a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits if she felt like it because nobody cared about her. In fact, she could sit there all day, from Barney and Friends to Porn Babes Laid Bare, with hours of the Landscape Channel in between, and eat the contents of an entire biscuit factory until she was an obese, earthbound balloon whose dead and bloated body would have to be hydraulically lifted from the house by a fire crew because nobody cared.”

— Kate Atkinson

“Flipped through memories like old copies of National Geographic, pages in a yellowing high-school year book, cable-television channels looking for a baseball game.”

— Dennis Vickers

“He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies.”

— Stephen Fry

“National Geographic has awesome stuff. I like Court TV. Sometimes I'll watch Reality Mix because they have some interesting stuff on that.”

— Erik Estrada

“I love watching the National Geographic channel. That show 'Taboo'? I love it!”

— Keshia Knight Pulliam

“All day, the colours had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapour, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the night, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at its summit.
Sai, sitting on the veranda, was reading an article about giant squid in an old National Geographic. Every now and then she looked up at Kanchenjunga, observed its wizard phosphorescence with a shiver. The judge sat at the far corner with his chessboard, playing against himself. Stuffed under his chair where she felt safe was Mutt the dog, snoring gently in her sleep. A single bald lightbulb dangled on a wire above. It was cold, but inside the house, it was still colder, the dark, the freeze, contained by stone walls several feet deep.”

— Kiran Desai

“I grew up in the 'hood around prostitutes, drug dealers, killers, and gangbangers, but I also grew up juxtaposed: On the doorknob outside of our apartment, there was blood from some guy who got shot; but inside, there was National Geographic magazines and encyclopedias and a little library bookshelf situation.”

— Lupe Fiasco

“I remember when an editor at the National Geographic promised to run about a dozen of my landscape pictures from a story on the John Muir trail as an essay, but when the group of editors got together, someone said that my pictures looked like postcards.”

— Galen Rowell

“When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.”

— Sam Abell

“My big dream was to work as a photographer for 'National Geographic.'”

— Steffi Graf

“I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.”

— Erma Bombeck

“I only watch National Geographic Channel, and also I have the app on my phone. I'm into astronomy and love to learn about new facts.”

— Sonu Nigam

“It's both Indiana Jones and 'National Geographic' that inspired me to be an Egyptologist.”

— Sarah Parcak

“In 2007, I received a National Geographic Expeditions Council grant to go around the top of the world and talk to Arctic people about how they've been impacted by climate change.”

— Gretel Ehrlich

“My best sources are my travels and my collection of National Geographic.”

— Sergio Aragones

“I had an insanely long commute - New York to D.C. - when I worked at 'National Geographic.' I hate to waste time, so I spent my time by writing about my life on the premise that I might be able to pitch those as short essays to magazines. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was writing a book.”

— Charles M. Blow

“I have a stunt double; his name is Glen Levy, and he has the hardest punch in the world. Seriously, it's actually been recorded by 'National Geographic.' He calls it the Hammer Fist.”

— Craig Horner

“She had not been conferred with a practical sense of how one went about this strange and all inverted business of being a girl, where seemingly natural stuff like going on about all the great things you just learned about Siberian tigers on National Geographic was suddenly weird, but totally weird stuff in and of itself like drawing around your eyeball with a pencil became normal, and it impressed to no end that it was a product of meticulous effort that made the twins seem so perfectly and effortlessly feminine.”

— Brian McGreevy

“My only wish would be to have 10 more lives to live on this planet. If that were possible, I'd spend one lifetime each in embryology, genetics, physics, astronomy and geology. The other lifetimes would be as a pianist, backwoodsman, tennis player, or writer for the 'National Geographic.'”

— Joseph Murray

“I love weird science. I learned in an article in 'National Geographic' that there are trillions of bacteria in our guts that help us digest food. These are non-human creatures.”

— Will Hobbs

“I feel like Africans are too often portrayed as people on the National Geographic channel: the image is of an African man in a loincloth chasing a gazelle. It's not intentionally racist; I wouldn't call it racist at all. It's a lack of understanding another culture.”

— Djimon Hounsou

“America has this understanding of Africans that plays like National Geographic: a bunch of Negroes with loincloths running around the plain fields of Africa chasing gazelles.”

— Djimon Hounsou

“I always take hundreds and hundreds of pictures. I used to work for 'National Geographic,' and they gave us a lot of film.”

— Yann Arthus-Bertrand

“I don't watch TV dramas. I watch ESPN, HBO boxing, National Geographic Channel and I kind of like to get some DVDs, movies that I haven't seen and I just pop them in.”

— Dominic Purcell

“I've read in the National Geographic about deepsea diving and why you have to wear a thick metal suit or the invisible pressure of the heavy undersea water will crush you like mud in a fist, until you implode. This is the word: implode. It has a dull final sound to it, like a lead door closing.”

— Margaret Atwood

“Strangely, I thought of the emotion I ought to feel without feeling it, as impartial as a National Geographic field researcher, carefully watching the events and chronicling them in a notebook. Deirdre finds that she is saddened by the news of her grandmother's death, and moreover, suddenly fears for the rest of her family and friends.”

— Maggie Stiefvater

“When I was a teenager, I thought maybe I'll be a filmmaker, making film documentaries. My dream when I was a girl was I would be hired by 'National Geographic' or work with David Attenborough, but it didn't happen. I became a model.”

— Isabella Rossellini

“Of course there is still unexplored terrestrial territory, but most of it is waterlogged. Submersed secret places, such as the Challenger Deep, which today lure hi-tech adventurers like Richard Branson and James Cameron, will undoubtedly provide welcome fodder for 'National Geographic.'”

— Seth Shostak

“When I write a scientific treatise, I might reach 100 people. When the 'National Geographic' covers a project, it communicates about plants and fish and underwater technology to more than 10 million people.”

— Sylvia Earle

“When you ate her tuna casserole, you didn't talk or flip through a National Geographic. Your eyes and ears stayed inside your mouth. Your whole world kept inside your mouth, feeling and careful for the little balled-up tinfoils Irene Casey would hide in the tuna parts. A side effect of eating slow was, you naturally, genuinely tasted, and the food tasted better. Could be other ladies were better cooks, but you'd never notice.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Isn't it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls "the National Geographic." She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it's too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa's camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn't take it with him when he left her. She said, "Maybe he wanted you to have it."
I said, "But I was negative-thirty years old." She said, "Still." Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls!”

— Jonathan Safran Foer

“You will be surprised but I do a lot of studying and I watch National Geographic.”

— Tracy Morgan

“I want to be a scientist who studies the ocean when I grow up. I would go out to sea, and scuba dive, and find new things, and National Geographic will hire me.
Sure, Nudge. Probably around the time I become president.”

— James Patterson

“Unstuck her in time, day-sleeping in her bedroom. How old was she? Seven, seventeen, twenty-seven? Dusk or dawn? Couldn't tell by the light outside. Checked her phone. Evening. The house silent, her mother probably asleep. Out through the smell of her grandfather's fifty years of National Geographic, shelved in the hall.”

— William Gibson

“We must strive to form a comprehensive sublime nationalism whose first principal is national geographic unity and must strengthen this unity with deeds not with words.”

— Ameen Rihani

“[Television executives] are afraid to advertise condoms that could save lives, but do not blush about telecasting a National Geographic special on President Reagan's pelvic plumbing.”

— Martin Nolan

“Human experience comes suspended in the sickly-sweet amniotic fluid of commercial photography. And a world normally animated by abrasive differences is blithely reduced to a single, homogeneous National Geographic way of seeing.”

— Geoffrey Batchen

“The real magic in National Geographic isn't how much money they have left at the end of the year. It's the fact that through their overall focus they are reaching hundreds of millions of people and educating people about the world. It just happens to be done in a business-oriented kind of way that is more sustainable.”

— Steve Case

“Today, National Geographic has a membership side with a magazine and some television side, and they generate about a billion dollars in revenue, and they're profitable. And so at the end of the year they have some bottom line profit which they can then reinvest, because they're running it as a not-for-profit in charitable endeavors.”

— Steve Case

“In most cases I start off with a sketch. But I'm also thinking about real images: out of National Geographic, out of fashion magazines, out of The Economist, out of Time. I'm making a sketch, but I'm using the existing images that have been put out in the world.”

— Wangechi Mutu

“Everyone thinks it would be great to work for National Geographic. So did I.”

— Peter Menzel

“The Democrats continue to snipe at Bush. They'll never give it up to him. You know Teddy Kennedy and Tom Daschle pick more nits than a father and son spider monkey team who know they're being followed by a National Geographic film crew.”

— Dennis Miller

“I love National Geographic. Just when you think you've seen the last lost native tribe, National Geographic will find a new one.”

— Sandra Bernhard

“For the same reason I read the National Geographic, I like to see places I will never visit.”

— Edward Bernays