40 Map Quotes About Navigating Life

map quotes about navigating life

These map quotes remind me a bit of my favorite life-changing books. They’re quotes from authors and singers and speakers and actors. A few of these quotes are practical. Some are more whimsical.

And there’s a line of relatability that runs through them all. These map quotes are about love and courage, chasing dreams and living large. They’re about seeking adventure and charting the unknown.

Here are forty map quotes about navigating life!

40 Map Quotes

• “It’s impossible to map out a route to your destination if you don’t know where you’re starting from.” – Suze Orman
• “Map out your future – but do it in pencil. The road ahead is as long as you make it. Make it worth the trip.” – Bon Jovi
• “If you wish to fly to new heights, begin by setting your sights on a destination you can reach and then create a flight plan, a map, that will be your guide.” – Debbie Ford
• “Any map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at.” – Oscar Wilde

• “I’ve got stories untold and maps to unfold, but every day I get where I’m going.” – Debby Ryan
• “I compare a lot of life to looking at a map through a straw. The less ability you have to see life in a humorous way, the smaller the straw is that you’re looking at the map of life. You’re not looking at the whole picture. You can’t see the whole topography without it, and it can help you to make better choices.” – Reggie Watts
• “After all, the past is our only real guide to the future, and historical analogies are instruments for distilling and organizing the past and converting it to a map by which we can navigate.” – Michael Mandelbaum
• “That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.” – Catherynne Valente

• “We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears.” – Chang-Rae Lee
• “At times, I think of my career as a map. The closer you get to the map, the more you know where you are.” – Rufus Sewell
• “Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
• “I just think that it’s very helpful to have a map of your psyche because when you have a map, you know where to go.” – Shakira

• “They were maps that lived, maps that one could study, frown over, and add to; maps, in short, that really meant something.” – Gerald Durrell
• “Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day” – Alexander McCall Smith
• “A map has no vocabulary, no lexicon of precise meanings. It communicates in lines, hues, tones, coded symbols, and empty spaces, much like music. Nor does a map have its own voice. It is many-tongued, a chorus reciting centuries of accumulated knowledge in echoed chants. A map provides no answers. It only suggests where to look: Discover this, reexamine that, put one thing in relation to another, orient yourself, begin here… Sometimes a map speaks in terms of physical geography, but just as often it muses on the jagged terrain of the heart, the distant vistas of memory, or the fantastic landscapes of dreams.” – Miles Harvey
• “A map does not just chart, it unlocks and formulates meaning; it forms bridges between here and there, between disparate ideas that we did not know, were previously connected.” – Reif Larsen

• “There are those who follow maps, and those who make them.” – Alberto Villoldo
• “Where one foot has tread, others will follow. It is foolish to think it can be stopped. The whole world will be laid bare eventually, all its secrets dragged out of their hiding places and set down on your maps.” – Jacquelyn Benson
• “Don’t rely on others to show you the way. Carry your own map.” – David Baird
• “Sometimes it is better to work out the map for yourself rather than have it given to you.” – Anson Jones

• “Life is a journey I don’t have a map for.” – Delta Goodrem
• “It is not down in any map; true places never are.” – Herman Melville
• “Sometimes there’s no map when you go to new places, you have to make unexpected turns, but the beauty is these places are new.” – Christopher Hawke
• “There’s no map for you to follow and take your journey. You are Lewis and Clark. You are the mapmaker.” – Phillipa Soo

• “You can’t use an old map to explore a new world.” – Albert Einstein
• “There are maps to show you how to get to the place where you want to be but no maps that show you how to get to the time when you want to be.” – Anthony Marra
• “True navigation begins in the human heart. It’s the most important map of all.” – Elizabeth Kapu’uwailani Lindsey
• There is only one map to the journey of life and it lives within your heart.” – Willie Nelson

• “Somewhere there is a map of how it can be done.” – Ben Stein
• “All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.” – Earl Nightingale
• “A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.” – Gilbert Grosvenor
• “Own your words. Your words are the maps to your intentions.” – Chris Brogan

• “Anytime I feel lost, I pull out a map and stare. I stare until I have reminded myself that life is a giant adventure, so much to do, to see.” – Angelina Jolie
• “Maps encourage boldness. They’re like cryptic love letters. They make anything seem possible.” – Mark Jenkins
• “The virtue of maps, they show what can be done with limited space, they foresee that everything can happen therein.” – Jose Saramago
• “When we allow ourselves to explore, we discover destinations that were never on our map.” – Amie Kaufman

• “I’m just the smallest dot in a big map of human history.” – Ben Casnocha
• “To stay on the map you’ve got to keep showing up.” – Peter Gallagher
• “Language is like looking at a map of somewhere. Love is living there and surviving on the land.” – Simon Van Booy
• “The map was just an accessory. She knew exactly where she was.” – Galt Niederhoffer

Did you find these map quotes useful? Are there any map quotes you would like to add to this post? Let me know in the comments below! As always, I love hearing from you.