David Livingstone quotes

David Livingstone was a Scottish explorer and missionary, famous for his expeditions in Africa. His travels helped map uncharted regions and increased European knowledge of the continent. He became a symbol of exploration and humanitarian efforts during the Victorian era. Here are 18 of his quotes:

Creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambezi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet [30 m] and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen to twenty yards.

David Livingstone

I determined never to stop until I had come to the end and achieved my purpose.

David Livingstone

Sympathy is no substitute for action.

David Livingstone

I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ.

David Livingstone

I will go anywhere, provided it is forward.

David Livingstone

No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.

David Livingstone

To overdraw its evil is a simple impossibility.

David Livingstone

If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.

David Livingstone

All that I am I owe to Jesus Christ, revealed to me in His divine Book.

David Livingstone

All I can say in my solitude is, May Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal this open sore of the world.

David Livingstone

Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.

David Livingstone

Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.

David Livingstone

People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay?

David Livingstone

July 29, 1869. - Went two and a half hours west to village of Ponda, where a head Arab, called by the natives 'Tipo Tipo' lives; bis name is Hamid bin Mohammed bin Juma Borajib. He presented a goat, a piece of white calico, and four big bunches of beads, also a bag of holens sorghum, and apologized because it was so little.

David Livingstone

And if my disclosures regarding the terrible Ujijian slavery should lead to the suppression of the East Coast slave trade, I shall regard that as a greater matter by far than the discovery of all the Nile sources together.

David Livingstone

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

David Livingstone