Top 35 Robert Ballard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The greatest discoveries all start with the question “Why?””

— Robert Ballard

2. “NASA’s annual budget for space exploration could fund NOAA’s budget for ocean exploration for 1600 years.”

— Robert Ballard

3. “The deep sea is the largest museum on earth, it contains more history than all the museums on land combined, and yet we’re only now penetrating it.”

— Robert Ballard

4. “Everyone is an explorer. How could you possibly live your life looking at a door and not open it?”

— Robert Ballard

5. “Remember to always dream. More importantly, work hard to make those dreams come true and never give up.”

— Robert Ballard

6. “Why are we ignoring the oceans? Why does NASA spend in one year what NOAA will spend in 1600 years? Why are we looking up? Why are we afraid of the ocean?”

— Robert Ballard

7. “The DEEP SEA has more history in it than all the museums of the world-combined.”

— Robert Ballard

8. “Fifty percent of the United States of America is underneath the ocean. And we have better maps of Mars than those areas.”

— Robert Ballard

9. “The Titanic will protect itself.”

— Robert Ballard

10. “So, you know, I think the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending, on our planet.”

— Robert Ballard

11. “I would not let an adult drive my robot. You don’t have enough gaming experience. But I will let a kid with no license take control of my vehicle system.”

— Robert Ballard

12. “Don’t confuse facts with reality.”

— Robert Ballard

13. “I can’t travel without Sudoku.”

— Robert Ballard

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

— Robert Ballard

15. “I mean, technology is amoral. It has no morality.”

— Robert Ballard

16. “You don’t let a historic site rot.”

— Robert Ballard

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

— Robert Ballard

18. “You don’t go to Gettysburg with a shovel, you don’t take belt buckles off the Arizona.”

— Robert Ballard

19. “My final question: Why are we not looking at moving out onto the sea? Why do we have programs to build a habitation on Mars and we have programs to look at colonizing the Moon but we do not have a program looking at how we colonize our own planet, and the technology is at hand!”

— Robert Ballard

20. “I am an underwater explorer, not a treasure hunter.”

— Robert Ballard

21. “Great is the person who plants a tree knowing he will never sit under it.”

— Robert Ballard

22. “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.”

— Robert Ballard

23. “If you plan it out, and it seems logical to you, then you can do it. I discovered the power of a plan.”

— Robert Ballard

24. “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.”

— Robert Ballard

25. “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.”

— Robert Ballard

26. “Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in San Diego next to the ocean. The ocean was my friend – my best friend.”

— Robert Ballard

27. “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.”

— Robert Ballard

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

— Robert Ballard

29. “It’s not a huge surprise that there are habitations at the bottom of the Black Sea.”

— Robert Ballard

30. “There’s a long list of technologies that have now made it possible to carry out very precise search efforts in the deep sea.”

— Robert Ballard

31. “What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre.”

— Robert Ballard

32. “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.”

— Robert Ballard

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

— Robert Ballard

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

— Robert Ballard

35. “You can only inspire when you give people a new way of looking at the world in which they live.”

— Robert Ballard

36. “I love all of the Earth.”

— Robert Ballard

37. “I prefer sayings over jokes.”

— Robert Ballard