Fiction

"I want to see what's out there... to see what lies beyond the sunset."

— Vyse, Skies of Arcadia

"Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

— Star Trek Opening Narration, TNG version

"They used to say if man could fly, he'd have wings... but he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn't reached the moon, or that we hadn't gone on to Mars or the nearest star? That's like saying you wish that you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your great-great-great-great-grandfather used to. I'm in command. I could order this. But I'm not … because … Dr. McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this. But I must point out that the possibilities, the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great. Risk ... risk is our business! That's what this starship is all about ... that's why we're aboard her!"

— Captain James T. Kirk, Star Trek: The Original Series, "Return to Tomorrow"

"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross. But it's not for the timid."

— Q, Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Q Who?"

Jonathan Archer: I understand there's an inhabited planet a few light years from here.
Malcolm Reed: Sensors show a nitrogen-sulfide atmosphere.
Hoshi Sato: Probably not humanoids.
Archer: That's what we're here to find out. Prepare to break orbit and lay in a course.
Travis Mayweather: I'm reading an ion storm on that trajectory, sir. Should I go around it?
Archer: We can't be afraid of the wind, Lieutenant. Take us to warp four.

— Star Trek: Enterprise ("Broken Bow")

"Starfleet could've sent a probe out here to make maps and take pictures, but they didn't. They sent us, so that we could explore with our own senses."

— Captain Archer, Star Trek: Enterprise ("Civilization")

"As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts."

— Ishmael, Moby-Dick

What the earliest Seekers of the Void ^note knew best was a curiosity that overpowered loneliness. Months of exploration would be broken by the encounter of another. Stories traded, campfire shared, the Seekers would continue on. They were slowly changed by their journey. The Seekers encountered strange beasts and powerful spirits; what would one day become legends were the lives lived by the Seekers of the Void. They learned that in the farthest reaches of the Earth lived things not of this world; knowing this in no way dissuaded their exploration.

— Mage: The Ascension - Convention Book: Void Engineers (Revised)

We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow
Hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the hordes and sing and cry
"Valhalla, I am coming!"
On we sweep with, with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore!

— Led Zeppelin, "Immigrant Song"

"The Bear went over the mountain (x3)

to see what he could see."

— Unknown, "The Bear Went Over the Mountain"

Look out new world here we come

Brave, intrepid and then some

Pioneers of maximum

Audacity whose resumes

Show that we are just the team

To live where others merely dream

Building up a head of steam

On the trail we blaze

— Elton John, The Road to El Dorado, "The Trail We Blaze"

We read the wind and the sky when the Sun is high.

We sail the length of the Sea on the ocean breeze.

At night we name every star,

We know where we are.

We know who we are.

— Lin-Manuel Miranda, Moana, "We Know The Way"

"There exists, in all of us, a deep-seated fascination for the unknown. An adventurous spirit that rejects the familiar and glories in the unfamiliar, whatever - or whomever - it may be."

— Xenophile ethos blurb, Stellaris

"I'm sorry, did I interrupt her speech? I heard all that let-us-boldly-go-where-no-man-has-gone-before from so-called explorers in the Vepaja Morass. There were little girls like me there already, but no-one ever named schools on Terra after us."

— B'Elanna Torres, Rocketship Voyager

"Yes, look at its power...power to drive a ship through space...power to tear your Earth apart! You know how long we worked on this? A thousand years of reaching for the stars! Now at last we've conquered Space. Ahh, the dreams we had of knowing other worlds..."

— It Came from Outer Space

"It is tempting to think of our expansion into the stars as simply the continued evolution of human knowledge. Yet the truth is that it will spawn new fields of science, entirely new schools of thought. It is not a mere step forward — it is to pull the rug from under everything we thought we knew."

— Director Khalid Al-Ashgar, Terra Invicta

Where western waves were all unknown, and western fields unsown,
When Iceland was the outmost bound, that Viking keels had found...

Gunbiorn then, Ulf Kraka's son, was forced west to run
By furious gales, and there saw land, stretching on either hand.
Eric of Iceland, called the Red, heard of the news and said,
"This western land I'll go and see; three summers hence look out, look out for me."
"A wondrous land is this" said he, and called it Greenland of the Sea.
Then searched the coast both far and wide, then back to Iceland o'er the tide.

Twenty-and-five great ships sailed west, to claim this gem on ocean's breast;
With man and woman, horn and hoof, and begging for the homestead roof.
Some turned back in heart but mice, some sank amid the northern ice;
Half reached land in much distress, at Ericsford and Herulfness.
Then Leif the son of Eric rose, and straightway to Biarne goes,
Buys up his ship, takes all his men, fares forth to seek that land again.

Leif found the land, discovered more, and spent a winter on the shore,
Named Hellaland and Markland too, and saw an island sweet with dew.
And grapes with great abundance found, so named it Vinland all around,
But after that forsook the shore, and north again for Greenland bore.

And now we cross the moonlit seas, to search this land of grapes and trees;
With men and cattle not a few, and household gear and weapons too,
And, best of all, with women dear, to comfort, counsel, check, and cheer.
Thus far we've made a prosperous way, God speed us onward every day!

—"Vinland Saga