5 Writers Who Affirm the Importance of Travel

Maya Angelou

I do know, however, that being exposed to the existence of other languages increases the perception that the world is populated by people who not only speak differently from oneself, but whose cultures and philosophies are other than one’s own.

In Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now American poet Maya Angelou named travel as the one hope we have to recognize “that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die.”

She believed that if we could recognize these shared experiences, we would be more likely to “understand each other [and] even become friends.” How often have you looked around a café, pub, or park in a foreign country, and realized this is so very true?

Margaret Mead

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate lovingly, our own.

One of the biggest rewards of traveling is developing a deeper understanding of your own home as you adjust to the patterns and realities of other cultures.

Margaret Mead, an American anthropologist best known for her book, Coming of Age in Samoa, reminds us that when we sharpen our ability to observe another culture, we’ll also be able to apply that level of perception and appreciation to our own roots.

Samuel Johnson

Every nation has something peculiar in its manufactures, its works of genius, its medicines, its agriculture, its customs, and its policy. He only is a useful traveler, who brings home something by which his country might be benefited; who procures some supply of want, or some mitigation of evil, which may enable his readers to compare their condition with that of others, to improve it whenever it is worse, and whenever it is better to enjoy it.

In a 1760 column for The Idler, English writer Samuel Johnson identified one of the richest rewards of traveling: applying new knowledge of different ways of life in a way that benefits your own country. Even if it’s only on a small scale, both you and those around you are all the richer for it.

Rosalia de Castro

I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I am going is what inspires me to travel it.

The best time to travel is always in the moment. And even if it means you don’t know where you’re heading, it is not knowing that makes it so much more exciting. Rosalia de Castro, Galician poet and writer, understood it is the unknown path that is the most inspiring one. After all, if you don’t know where you’re going, you can’t get lost.

COMMUNITY CONNECTION:

The history of literature and philosophy is filled with writers whose thoughts on travel remain relevant today. Check out 5 Eastern Thinkers Who Understood Inner Travel and 5 Western Thinkers Who Understood Inner Travel for some of their timeless, universal ideas.