Ernest Shackleton
Ernest Shackleton
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGSwas a polar explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, and one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Born in Kilkea, Athy, County Kildare, Ireland, Shackleton and his Anglo-Irish family moved to Sydenham in suburban south London when he was ten. His first experience of the polar regions was as third officer on Captain Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition 1901–04, from which he...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionExplorer
Date of Birth15 February 1874
CityKilkea, Ireland
CountryIreland
If you're a leader, a fellow that other fellows look to, you've got to keep going.
Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all.
Loneliness is the penalty of leadership, but the man who has to make the decisions is assisted greatly if he feels that there is no uncertainty in the minds of those who follow him, and that his orders will be carried out confidently and in the expectation of success.
I have often marveled at the thin line which separates success from failure.
When things are easy, I hate it.
I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.
One feels 'the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech' in trying to describe things intangible.
Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last... to the North Pole.
From the sentimental point of view, it is the last great Polar journey that can be made.
After months of want and hunger, we suddenly found ourselves able to have meals fit for the gods, and with appetites the gods might have envied.