1. “The mind can be a crazy monkey that is always dying to escape from the moment.” – Rolf Potts
2. “Vagabonding is about not merely reallotting a portion of your life for travel but rediscovering the entire concept of time.” – Rolf Potts
3. “They are spending plenty of time and money on the road, but they never spent enough of themselves to begin with. Thus, their experience of travel has a diminished sense of value.” – Rolf Potts
4. “If in doubt, just walk until your day becomes interesting.” – Rolf Potts
5. “If in doubt about what to do in a place, just start walking through your new environment. Walk until your day becomes interesting – even if this means wandering out of town and strolling the countryside. Eventually you’ll see a scene or meet a person that makes your walk worthwhile. If you get “lost” in the process, just take a bus or taxi to a local landmark and find your way back to your hotel from there.” – Rolf Potts
6. “It’s a wonder that we can see these trees and not wonder more.” – Rolf Potts
7. “The goal of preparation then is not knowing exactly where you’ll go but being confident nonetheless that you’ll get there.” – Rolf Potts
8. “If you wander with open eyes and simple curiosity, you’ll discover a much richer pleasure – the simple feeling of possibility that hums from every direction as you move from place to place.” – Rolf Potts
9. “What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you’re not in a hurry.” – Rolf Potts
10. “Long-term travel doesn’t require a massive bundle of cash; it requires only that we walk through the world in a more deliberate way.” – Rolf Potts
11. “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” – Rolf Potts
12. “We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope;” – Rolf Potts
13. “If you view the world as a predominately hostile place, it will be,” wrote Ed Buryn.” – Rolf Potts
14. “The act of vagabonding is not an isolated trend so much as it is a spectral connection between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language.” – Rolf Potts
15. “Vagabonding is about refusing to exile travel to some other, seemingly more appropriate, time of your life. Vagabonding is about taking control of your circumstances instead of passively waiting for them to decide your fate.” – Rolf Potts
16. “Time is the truest form of wealth. And the beauty is, we are all born equally rich in time.” – Rolf Potts
17. “Vagabonding involves taking an extended time-out from your normal life – six weeks, four months, two years – to travel the world on your own terms.” – Rolf Potts
18. “After all, vagabonding involves sacrifices, and its particular sacrifices are not for everyone.” – Rolf Potts
19. “Vagabonding is about using the prosperity and possibility of the information age to increase your personal options instead of your personal possessions.” – Rolf Potts
20. “The simple willingness to improvise is more vital, in the long run, than research.” – Rolf Potts
21. “We see as we are,” said” – Rolf Potts
22. “In reality long-term travel has nothing to do with demographics, age, ideology, income, and everything to do with personal outlook.” – Rolf Potts
23. “The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home — and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.” – Rolf Potts
24. “Seeing’ as you travel is somewhat of a spiritual exercise: a process not of seeking interesting surroundings, but of being continually interested in whatever surrounds you.” – Rolf Potts
25. “Instead – out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don’t really need – we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called “lifestyle,” travel becomes just another accessory – a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture.” – Rolf Potts
26. “you should view each new travel frustration—sickness, fear, loneliness, boredom, conflict—as just another curious facet in the vagabonding adventure.” – Rolf Potts
27. “Vagabonding is an attitude – a friendly interest in people, places, and things that makes a person an explorer in the truest, most vivid sense of the word.” – Rolf Potts
28. “spectral connection between people long separated by place and time, but somehow speaking the same language.” – Rolf Potts
29. “For all the amazing experiences that await you in distant lands, the “meaningful” part of travel always starts at home, with a personal investment in the wonders to come.” – Rolf Potts
30. “The more we associate experience with cash value, the more we think that money is what we need to live. And the more we associate money with life, the more we convince ourselves that we’re too poor to buy our freedom.” – Rolf Potts
31. “In a way, simplifying your life for vagabonding is easier than it sounds. This is because travel by its very nature demands simplicity. If you don’t believe this, just go home and try stuffing everything you own into a backpack. This will never work, because no matter how meagerly you live at home, you can’t match the scaled-down minimalism that travel requires.” – Rolf Potts
32. “For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead — out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don’t really need — we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts.” – Rolf Potts
33. “Money, of course, is still needed to survive, but time is what you need to live. So, save what little money you possess to meet basic survival requirements, but spend your time lavishly in order to create the life values that make the fire worth the candle. Dig?” – Rolf Potts
34. “Work is when you confront the problems you might otherwise be tempted to run away from” – Rolf Potts
35. “the Buddha whimsically pointed out that seeking happiness in one’s material desires is as absurd as “suffering because a banana tree will not bear mangoes.” – Rolf Potts
36. “Pro and con lists – one of my previous favorites – are just as bad. If it’s important to you, and you want to do it eventually, just do it, and correct course along the way. Fortune favors the bold.” – Rolf Potts
37. “At times, the biggest challenge in embracing simplicity will be the vague feeling of isolation that comes with it, since private sacrifice doesn’t garner much attention in the frenetic world of mass culture.” – Rolf Potts
38. “Indeed, the most vivid travel experiences usually find you by accident, and the qualities that will make you fall in love with a place are rarely the features that took you there.” – Rolf Potts
39. “Begin to look at maps with the narcotic tingle of possibility.” – Rolf Potts
40. “A vacation, after all, merely rewards work. Vagabonding justifies it.” – Rolf Potts
41. “To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for traveling souls.” – Rolf Potts
42. “Of all the adventures and challenges that wait on the vagabonding road, the most difficult can be the act of coming home.” – Rolf Potts
43. “And we’ll be haunted by our unrealized dreams and know that we have sinned against ourselves gravely.” – Rolf Potts
44. “And let me tell you something. That first morning, when you are in your country of choice, away from all of the conventions of atypical, everyday lifestyle, looking around at your totally new surroundings, hearing strange languages, smelling strange, new smells, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ll feel like the luckiest person in the world.” – Rolf Potts
45. “If in doubt, just walk until your day becomes interesting.” – Rolf Potts