The Grand Canyon is a true wonder of the world. This incredible landscape, carved by the Colorado River through incredible red Navajo Sandstone is a sight to behold. Whether you take it in from the viewpoints at the rim, or from the trails along the valley floor, this is one of those places you have to see at least once in your lifetime.
We’ve visited twice already and still dream about going back!
Here are the 20 best Grand Canyon quotes to inspire your visit.
The 20 Best Grand Canyon Quotes
“The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself.”
- John Wesley Powell
“I can still remember my first experience of standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looking into it. It was so awesome, it took a fair amount of restraint to prevent me from jumping into it, because I was certain I could fly.”
- Mark Goulston
“The glories and the beauties of form, color, and sound unite in the Grand Canyon”
- John Wesley Powell
“Standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and contemplating your own greatness is pathological. At such moments we are made for a magnificent joy that comes from outside ourselves.”
- John Piper
“Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe it. A flower is beautiful. But this is beautiful the way that a person is beautiful- terrifying with its jagged edges, yet seductive with its crevices that hide so many secrets.”
- Jeri Smith-Ready
“I believe in science and evolution. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon.”
- Bill Walton
“I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also.”
- John McCain
“We are all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase self-esteem. Why do we go? Because there is greater healing for the soul in beholding splendor than there is in beholding self.”
- John Piper
“It is a spectacular illusion – a deeply three-dimensional scene flattened onto an earthly canvas.”
- Stefanie Payne
“Well, once you’ve been in the Canyon and once you’ve sort of fallen in love with it, it never ends…it’s always been a fascinating place to me, in fact I’ve often said that if I ever had a mistress it would be the Grand Canyon.”
- Barry Goldwater
“The Grand Canyon is carven deep by the master hand; it is the gulf of silence, widened in the desert; it is all time inscribing the naked rock; it is the book of earth.”
- Donald C. Peattie
“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
“There will never be a photograph of the Grand Canyon that can adequately describe its depth, breadth, and true beauty.”
- Stefanie Payne
“You cannot see the Grand Canyon in one view, as if it were a changeless spectacle from which a curtain might be lifted, but to see it you have to toil from month to month through its labyrinths.”
- John Wesley Powell
”If there is a point to being in the canyon, it is not to rush but to linger, suspended in a blue-and-amber haze of in-between-ness, for as long as one possibly can. To float, to drift, savoring the pulse of the river on its odyssey through the canyon, and above all, to postpone the unwelcome and distinctly unpleasant moment when one is forced to reemerge and reenter the world beyond the rim-that is the paramount goal.”
- Kevin Fedarko
“Crying – acceptable at funerals and the Grand Canyon.”
- Ron Swanson (Parks and Recreation)
”Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.”
- George Will
“I don’t believe that anyone can see the Grand Canyon area for themselves and not know that we have to do everything we can to protect it for future generations.”
- Nolan Gould
“The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse.”
- John Wesley Powell
“Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo”
- Don Marquis
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What are your favourite Grand Canyon Quotes? Let us know in the comments below!
