These Grand Canyon quotes will inspire you to travel to one of the biggest canyons in the world.
The Grand Canyon is a landscape that will show you the history of our planet and the beauty of the Earth. It is a canyon from northern Arizona that was paved by the Colorado River and the billion old Vishnu rocks. Indeed, it’s a concrete visual of the immense power of nature.
Aside from its rich geological history, the view from the Grand Canyon is a sight that you should never miss.
So, if this nature’s gift has piqued your interest, then add this collection to your must-read list now. Read the full collection below that will surely inspire your next visit!
Let’s get started.
And don’t forget to check out these mountain quotes.
Best Grand Canyon Quotes
1. “The glories and the beauties of form, color, and sound unite in the Grand Canyon.” – John Wesley Powell
2. “There will never be a photograph of the Grand Canyon that can adequately describe its depth, breadth, and true beauty.” – Stefanie Payne
3. “The elements that unite to make the Grand Canyon the most sublime spectacle in nature are multifarious and exceedingly diverse.” – John Wesley Powell
4. “In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world.” – Theodore Roosevelt
5. “The Grand Canyon is carven deep by the master’s 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
6. “The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself.” – John Wesley Powell
7. “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
8. “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
9. “The Grand Canyon is living evidence of the power of water over a period of time. The power may not manifest immediately. Water can be very powerful, like a tidal wave.” – Frederick Lenz
10. “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
11. “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
Inspirational Grand Canyon Quotes
12. “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
13. “Anybody who travels knows that you’re not really doing so in order to move around. You’re traveling in order to be moved. And really what you’re seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you’re sleepwalking through your daily life.” – Pico Iyer
14. “The Grand Canyon is really a motion picture. There is the Grand Canyon of the early morning when the light slants lengthwise from the Painted Desert. The great capes of the northern rim shoot into the picture, outlined in golden light against which their shapes gloom in hazy blues.” – National Park Service Journal
15. “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
16. “It doesn’t have to be the Grand Canyon. It could be a city street. It could be the face of another human being. Everything is full of wonder.” – A.C. Grayling
17. “Sunrise, Grand Canyon. We stand on the edge, the fall. Into depth, the ascent of light revelatory, the canyon walls moving up out of shadow, lit colors of the layers cutting down through the darkness, sunrise as it passes a precipitate of the river, its burnt tangerine flare brief, jagged.” – Rick Kempa
18. “I do not know, really, how we will survive without places like the Inner Gorge of the Grand Canyon to visit. Once in a lifetime, even, is enough. To feel the stripping down, an ebb of the press of conventional time, a radical change of proportion, an unspoken respect for others that elicits keen emotional pleasure, a quick, intimate pounding of the heart. The living of life, any life, involves great and private pain, much of which we share with no one. In such places as the Inner Gorge, the pain trails away from us. It is not so quiet there or so removed that you can hear yourself think, that you would even wish to. That comes later. You can hear your heart beat. That comes first.” – Barry Lopez
Grand Canyon Quotes That Will Show the Beauty of Nature
19. “Beautiful doesn’t begin to describe the Grand Canyon. 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
20. “It is a new Grand Canyon, the same but wonderfully different. And just after sunset, the reds deepen to dim purples, and the grays and yellows and greens change to magical blues. In the dark of a moonless night, the canyon suggests unimaginable mysteries.” – Anonymous
21. “It’s not at all naturally human to see something like the Grand Canyon as beautiful.” – David Roberts
22. “Seeing the Grand Canyon for yourself? Priceless.” – Anonymous
23. “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
24. “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-betweenness 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
25. “What can be more soul-shaking than peering through a 100-inch telescope at a distant galaxy, holding a 100 million-year-old fossil or a 500,000-year-old stone tool in one’s hand, standing before the immense chasm of space and time that is the Grand Canyon, or listening to a scientist who gazed upon the face of the universe’s creation and did not blink?” – Michael Shermer
26. “When your spirit cries for peace, come to a world of canyons deep in the old land.” – August Fruge
27. “He meant the Grand Canyon was only a mood of nature, a bold promise, a beautiful record. He meant that mountains had sifted away in its dust, yet the canyon was young. Man was nothing, so let him be humble. This cataclysm of the earth, this playground of a river, was not inscrutable. It was only inevitable, as inevitable as nature herself. Millions of years in the bygone ages, it had lain serene under a half-moon. It would bask silently under a rayless sun, in the onward edge of time.” – Zane Grey
Also read: Road Trip Quotes, Hiking Quotes
Meaningful Grand Canyon Quotes for Travelers
28. “It’s like trying to describe what you feel when you’re standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or remembering your first love or the birth of your child. You have to be there to really know what it’s like.” – Harrison Hagan Schmitt
29. “There’s not a single person in Arizona today who would say the Grand Canyon was a mistake.” – Stewart Udall
30. “Flash after flash across the horizon, tourists trying to take the Grand Canyon by night. They don’t know every last shot will turn out black.” – Chana Bloch
31. “Myths that need clarification: ‘No matter how many times you see the Grand Canyon, you are still emotionally moved to tears.’ False. It depends on how many children the out-of-towners brought with them who kicked the back of your seat from Phoenix to Flagstaff and got their gum caught in your hair.” – Erma Bombeck
32. “It took five days to drive to Los Angeles by myself. I listened to Abbey Road for six hours at a time and watched the desert open up before me again and again.” – Madi Diaz
33. “Truly, Arizona is a wonderland, and in the Grand Canyon, one can think of nothing but the Abomination of Desolation.” – John Gregory Bourke
34. “I saw the sun set and rise at the Grand Canyon, and I sang out over the cliffs, picked up tumbleweeds, along the way and threw them in the back of my car.” – Madi Diaz
Also read: Into the Wild Quotes
Grand Canyon Quotes to Laugh About
35. “Crying, acceptable at funerals and the Grand Canyon.” – Ron Swanson
36. “When visiting the Grand Canyon, make sure you hike into the canyon, and be careful not to fall or step in mule poop.” – McKenna Shay
37. “If you’re ever thinking, ‘Oh, but I’m a waste of space, I’m a burden.’ Remember, that also describes the Grand Canyon.” – Maria Bamford
38. “I believe in a benevolent God not because He created the Grand Canyon or Michelangelo, but because He gave us snacks.” – Paul Rudnick
39. “You can’t say you’re going to jump the Grand Canyon and then jump some other canyon.” – Evel Knievel
40. “I would rather stumble by chance on a tiny stream in the woods than plan a trip to the Grand Canyon.” – Marty Rubin
41. “Life is supposed to be a series of peaks and valleys. The secret is to keep the valleys from becoming Grand Canyons.” – Bernard Williams
42. “When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, ‘It is done.’ People did not like it here.” – Kurt Vonnegut
43. “Majestic doesn’t appeal to us. We Americans like the Grand Canyon better with Clarence and Arlene parked in front of it, smiling.” – Garrison Keillor
44. “I could throw 56-pound words clear across the Grand Canyon. As a matter of course, I went into politics.” – Henry F. Ashurst
45. “I have permits to be the first person in the world to walk across the Grand Canyon, so that’s a process we’ll start working on. I’d say within three to five years, I’ll accomplish that as well.” – Nik Wallenda
Also read: Funny Quotes
Hilarious Grand Canyon Quotes That Are Full of Puns
46. “The Grand Canyon opens up before your very rise.” – Anonymous
47. “Americans take the Grand Canyon for granite.” – Anonymous
48. “The Grand Canyon is just gorges.” – Anonymous
49. “I get all sedimental at the Grand Canyon.” – Anonymous
50. “There’s a lot I could say about the Grand Canyon, but it all seems too deep.” – Anonymous
51. “The Grand Canyon: it’ll knock your rocks off.” – Anonymous
52. “Grand Canyon State. Rightly said.” – Anonymous
53. “Have you camped in the Grand Canyon? It’s intents.” – Anonymous
54. “Leaving the Grand Canyon has me feeling vista-ful.” – Anonymous
55. “Don’t tell me too much about the Grand Canyon. I just want the cliff notes.” – Anonymous
56. “Steep a cool head at the Grand Canyon, and don’t look down!” – Anonymous
Grand Canyon Quotes That’ll Get Your Facts Straight
57. “A rill in a barnyard and the Grand Canyon represents, in the main, stages of valley erosion that began some millions of years apart.” – George Gaylord Simpson
58. “The Colorado River did not form the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon was formed as the flood went down.” – Kevin Hovind
59. “I believe in science and evolution. I’ve been to the Grand Canyon.” – Bill Walton
60. “Politicians wanted to mine the Grand Canyon for zinc and copper, and Theodore Roosevelt said, ‘No.'” – Douglas Brinkley
61. “Occasionally, we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims, the canyon seems oceanic. At the surface of the river, the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars, we seem utterly remote down here.” – Barry Lopez
62. “But to carve the Grand Canyon, Earth required millions of years. To excavate Meteor Crater, the universe, using a 60,000-ton asteroid traveling upward of 20 miles per second, requiring a fraction of a second.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
63. “In fact, just about all the major natural attractions you find in the West—the Grand Canyon, the Badlands, the Goodlands, the Mediocre Lands, the Rocky Mountains, and Robert Redford were caused by erosion.” – Dave Barry
64. “As for the flood carving the Grand Canyon, why don’t they explain to us why the top of the Canyon is 4,000 feet higher than where the river enters the canyon? Why don’t they explain to us how rivers miraculously flowed uphill for millions of years to finally cut the groove deep enough so they could flow downhill?” – Kent Hovind
Grand Canyon Quotes to Motivate You to Protect Mother Earth’s Gift
65. “We’ve got to step up our conservation efforts before it’s too late. We’re not protecting our lands and natural resources. Take the Grand Canyon, for example. I’m sure that at one time it was a beautiful piece of land, and just look at the way we’ve let it go.” – Pat Paulsen
66. “The astonishing sense of connection with that river and canyon caught me completely unaware, and in a breath, I understood the intense, protective loyalty so many people feel for the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. It has to do with truth and beauty and love of this earth, the artifacts of a lifetime and the descent of a canyon wren at dawn.” – Ann Zwinger
67. “The Grand Canyon is too grand for a steady diet. It is so overwhelmingly impressive that you can not continue indefinitely on that exalted emotional level. In the parlance of the connoisseur of paintings, the Canyon is a ‘museum-piece.’ Let the beauty-lover beware of going anywhere else on earth!” – Robert Haven
68. “My goal is that after seeing the Grand Canyon, every person in the audience will go home knowing they have to conserve water. Even something as simple as installing a low-flow toilet or showerhead, or turning off the faucet while they’re brushing their teeth.” – Greg MacGillivray
Grand Canyon Quotes to Imagine the Incredible Size of the Gorge
69. “The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles.” – Peter Kreeft
70. “Working with Jack Nicholson is sort of like standing in front of the Grand Canyon.” – Diane Keaton
71. “With what you don’t know about me, I could just about fill the Grand Canyon.” – Kevin Smith
Interesting Grand Canyon Quotes for People Who Want to Visit
72. “Grand Canyon—a date with nature.” – Anonymous
73. “Eating fruit at the Grand Canyon. A song to make death easy since this great hole in Earth is beyond my comprehension and I am hungry, I sit on the rim and eat fruit.” – Diana Hume George
74. “It’s always been a luxury to be able to hop a plane to Paris, to Venice, to the Grand Canyon.” – Nancy Gibbs
75. “I wish they’d build a ski jump at the Grand Canyon. It’d be fantastic.” – Eddie the Eagle
76. “I went to the Grand Canyon with my family when I was about eight years old, and I had a very ‘blah’ experience. I think the scale of it is too huge. You don’t appreciate it.” – David Roberts
More Grand Canyon Quotes That You Will Enjoy
77. “If you are working, almost like with layers of the Grand Canyon, there’s history within those layers.” – Leonardo Drew
78. “The Grand Canyon, which yawns between the writer’s concept of what he wants to capture in words and what comes through is a cruel abyss.” – Fannie Hurst
79. “A doctor once told me I feel too much. I said, so does God. That’s why you can see the Grand Canyon from the moon.” – Andrea Gibson
80. “I get very upset when money is being cut, and people can’t visit the Grand Canyon.” – Anne Waldman
Have You Visited the Grand Canyon?
The Grand Canyon went through millions of years of erosion through the power of the Colorado River before it became a beautiful sight. It has gone through intense changes that gave millions of Native Americans and tribes a home.
Learning about the canyon’s history is to witness nature’s work. It is a reminder that time gives birth to different possibilities in the future. Metaphorically, it shows how life can change people and change them into better persons.
We hope these quotes were able to inform you about the Grand Canyon and how powerful nature can be. Keep exploring nature because there is a lot to learn from Mother Earth!
Which Grand Canyon quotes are your favorites? Did you learn a lot from this Grand Canyon quote collection? Leave your comments below!
