Robert Ballard's Quotes

You don't let a historic site rot.

Almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range and we didn't enter it until after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon. So we went to the moon, played golf up there, before we went to the largest feature on our own planet.

Fifty percent of our country that we own, have all legal jurisdiction, have all rights to do whatever we want, lies beneath the sea and we have better maps of Mars than that 50 percent.

I am really dedicated to understanding the planet/creature on which we live and know that means I must go beneath the sea to see 72 percent of what is going on.

My family came in 1635 from England and settled in Williamsburg. Shortly after, they split up; half went to New England and half stayed in Virginia. I'm a Virginian Ballard.

The body is sort of a pain. It has to go to the bathroom. It has to be comfortable. But the spirit is indestructible. It can move at the speed of light.

There's probably more history now preserved underwater than in all the museums of the world combined. And there's no law governing that history. It's finders keepers.

Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that's a big ice cube. But then it started to melt. We're talking about the floods of our living history.

It is a quiet and peaceful place - and a fitting place for the remains of this greatest of sea tragedies to rest.

I think the most important thing people can do to save our planet and the human race is to empower women!

Most of the southern hemisphere is unexplored. We had more exploration ships down there during Captain Cook's time than now. It's amazing.

There are more active volcanoes beneath the sea than on land by two orders of magnitude.

I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student, I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle, which is a bunch of crap.

Don't confuse facts with reality.

Follow your own passion - not your parents', not your teachers' - yours.

Forever may it remain that way. And may God bless these now-found souls.

I am a geologist.

I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.

I believe in just enriching the economy. And we're leaving so much on the table, 72 percent of the planet.

I can't travel without Sudoku.

I love all of the Earth.

I mean, technology is amoral. It has no morality.

I mean, there is amazing amount of oil and gas and other resources out beneath the sea. It's staggering.

I prefer sayings over jokes.

I would have to say my favorite place on Earth is Bora Bora.

If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.