Ocean quotes
2.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside ocean — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. the water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop."
"How much do you love me?' and "Who's in charge?" ....these two questions of LOVE and CONTROL undo us ALL, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering. People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate -- and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean."
"The ocean is worth writing about just as man is."
"For too long we have placed an irrational burden upon our oceans by demanding only a narrow selection of species, which has led to unsustainable fishing and economic practices. If we instead ask the ocean what it is willing to supply, we engage in an inherently more sustainable relationship."
"Mortal City was really influenced by geography. [The song] "The Ocean" is the Pacific Northwest. Southern California and New York also figure into songs, and Iowa. "February" is very much about New England. "Mortal City" is Philadelphia. The whole album is this anthropomorphized landscape where the metaphors live in this geography."
"Every drop of water in an ocean contains the flavor of the whole ocean. So too, every moment in time contains the flavor of eternity, if you could live in that moment, but most people do not live in the moment which is the only time they really have."
"We're still putting 110 million tons of man-made global pollution into the air every single day as if the sky is an open sewer. More than 90% of the extra heat energy is going into the oceans, and that's why superstorm Sandy was so much more destructive, that's why the ice is melting more rapidly, that's why the water cycle is being disrupted and we get a lot more water vapor coming from the oceans into the sky, and that's why we get these enormous downpours and big floods. They happen all the time. Every night on the TV news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation."
"[Ocean's Thirteen] is a great group, and it was an opportunity to work with Steven Soderbergh. But mainly? It was shot in L.A. and I want to be next to my kids. So I've been doing everything that has to do with being next to them, close to them."
"In the aftermath of the recent wave action in the Indian Ocean, even the archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williamson [sic], proved himself a latter-day Voltairean by whimpering that he could see how this might shake belief in a friendly creator. Williamson is of course a notorious fool, who does an almost perfect imitation of a bleating and frightened sheep, but even so, one is forced to rub one's eyes in astonishment. Is it possible that a grown man could live so long and still have his personal composure, not to mention his lifetime job description, upset by a large ripple of seawater?"
"As the cleansing ocean closes over bin Laden's carcass, may the earth lie lightly on the countless graves of those he sentenced without compunction to be burned alive or dismembered in the street."
"Scientists say because of global warming they expect the world's oceans to rise four and a half feet. The scientists say this can mean only one thing: Gary Coleman is going to drown."
"Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence."
"Michael Jackson was part of that tremendous wave in the ocean of human expression and it happened to be located first and foremost in Gary, Indiana, working class."
"Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll evolve to become so skilled at fishing he destroys the ocean and kills every last fish."
"Some of the reasons why Muslims would look down on America or even countries that have democracy, is because that's what they've been taught all their life. And it's not really their fault if you think about it, it's their government's fault for teaching people that America, them over there across the ocean, they're the devil."
"I can never drive my car over a bridge without thinking of suicide. I can never look at a lake or an ocean without thinking of suicide."
"she is no longer the beautiful woman she was. she sends photos of herself sitting upon a rock by the ocean alone and damned. I could have had her once. I wonder if she thinks I could have saved her?"
"Going up north with the redwoods and driving along the coast, it's got everything, man. It's got the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. It's beautiful."
"And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’ But I’ll know my song well before I start singin"
"Seven shots ring out like the ocean's pounding roar, there's seven people dead on a South Dakota farm."
