One of my favorite ways to travel is on a road trip.
There’s something about having the windows rolled down with your hair blowing about, great music blasting, company by your side, and a sense of adventure and open-mindedness.
I’ve road tripped all over the world, from the ruby-rocked American Southwest to the emerald green mountains of the Faroe Islands to the fjords of western Iceland to the windswept Atlantic volcanic landscape of the Azores to the interior of Bulgaria to the lush landscapes of the interior of Brazil.
Road tripping is truly my favorite way to experience a destination, and I think if you’re on this page, you probably feel the same!
I’ve gathered a whopping 150 quotes about road trips, perfect for every occasion. There are quotes about road tripping with friends, detour quotes, road trip song lyrics, short and sweet road trip quotes, long and lyrical road trip quotes… truly the list goes on!
Feel free to use these road trip quotes for whatever purpose (crediting the original author) for using in road trip Instagram captions, writing, or whatever you like!
Table of Contents
Inspiring Road Trip Quotes
“Road trips are the equivalent of human wings. Ask me to go on one, anywhere. We’ll stop in every small town and learn the history and stories, feel the ground, and capture the spirit. Then we’ll turn it into our own story that will live inside our history to carry with us, always.”
– Victoria Erickson
“One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of seeing things.”
— Henry Miller (this quote is the inspiration for this blog’s name!)
“Because the greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way.”
— Emma Chase
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.”
– Douglas Adams
“She wasn’t where she had been. She wasn’t where she was going, but she was on her way.”
― Jodi Hills
“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.”
– Lao Tzu
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
– Jack Kerouac
“Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person.”
– Yvon Chouinard
“Look for chances to take the less-traveled roads. There are no wrong turns.”
— Susan Magsamen
“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
– T.S. Eliot
“Look on every exit being an entrance somewhere else.”
– Tom Stoppard
“Because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars…”
– Jack Kerouac
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
– Anthony Bourdain
“The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to.”
— Alain de Botton
“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, To gain all while you give, To roam the roads of lands remote, To travel is to live.”
– Hans Christian Andersen
“I climb behind the steering wheel… I drive off immediately without once looking back; it’s a long journey, but it leads to freedom.”
– Corinne Hofmann
“The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.”
– William Least Heat-Moon
“Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.”
– Elizabeth Berg
“Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure”
– Bob Bitchin
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
“Map out your future – but do it in pencil. The road ahead is as long as you make it. Make it worth the trip.”
– Jon Bon Jovi
“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.”
– Walt Disney
“The freedom of the open road is seductive, serendipitous, and absolutely liberating.”
– Aaron Lauritsen
“When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.”
– Charles de Lint
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.”
– John Steinbeck
“No one you have been and no place you have gone ever leaves you. The new parts of you simply jump in the car and go along for the rest of the ride. The success of your journey and your destination all depends on who’s driving.”
– Bruce Springsteen
“I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“Every journey is simultaneously a beginning and an ending: I was leaving my old life behind and starting on a road trip to find a new me.”
– Debi Tolbert Duggar
“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”
– Rosalia de Castro
“If you make the mistake of looking back too much, you aren’t focused enough on the road in front of you.”
– Brad Paisley
Quotes about Road Tripping with Friends
“Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.”
– Izaak Walton
“Road trips aren’t measured by mile markers, but by moments.”
— Source unknown
“It’s in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home.”
– Aaron Lauritsen
“We all have that one friend who is either on a road trip or planning a road-trip or thinking about a road-trip or talking to people who are on road-trip or posting quotes about road-trip.”
– Crestless Wave
“Happiness is planning a trip somewhere new with someone you love.”
– Saadiyat Rotana
“No road is long with good company.”
– Turkish Proverb
“Some roads aren’t meant to be travelled alone.”
– Chinese Proverb
“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.”
– Miriam Adeney
“People don’t take trips, trips take people.”
– John Steinbeck
“At the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy and your eyes sparkling.”
– Shanti
“The road goes on forever and the party never ends.”
– Robert Earl Keen
“A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.”
– Tim Cahill
Long Drive Quotes
“I love road trips. You get into this Zen rhythm; throw the sense of time out the window.”
– Miriam Toews
“I just go with the flow, I follow the yellow brick road. I don’t know where it’s going to lead me, but I follow it.”
– Grace Jones
“I climb behind the steering wheel… I drive off immediately without once looking back; it’s a long journey but it leads to freedom.”
– Corinne Hofmann
“You know more of a road by having traveled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.”
– William Hazlitt
“The road must eventually lead to the whole world.”
– Jack Kerouac
“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
– Lewis Carroll
Detour Quotes
“Dead-end roads don’t mean you’ve come to your end, just means you need to take a different detour.”
― Anthony Liccione
“Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn’t mean to take.”
― Angela N. Blount
“The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery, even when they have to take a detour.”
― Sir James Jeans
“Never view obstacles in your path as the enemy. Rather, view any obstacles as detour signs to avoid pitfalls.”
― Donald L. Hicks
“A detour didn’t have to alter the destination, it merely changed the path.”
― Kathy Harris
“Take a detour.
Discover small towns
and friendly faces
that don’t grow along the highway.”
― Khang Kijarro Nguyen
“Life is a journey with almost limitless detours.”
― Ken Poirot
“Without struggle, success has no value.”
― Aaron Lauritsen
Short Quotes About Road Trips
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
– Helen Keller
“Look at life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror.”
— Byrd Baggett
“And just like that, we’re on our way to everywhere.”
– Emery Lord
“I don’t know where I’m going from here but I promise it won’t be boring.”
– David Bowie
“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.”
– Jack Kerouac
“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road.”
– Walt Whitman
“The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.”
– Aaron Lauritsen
“The real home of man is not his house but the road.”
— Bruce Chitin
“Life is beautiful if you are on the road to somewhere.”
– Orhan Pamuk
“Live your life by a compass, not a clock.”
– Stephen Covey
“There are no mistakes. Only new paths to explore.”
– Gregory David Roberts
“Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by.”
– Robert Frost
“I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.”
– Paulo Coelho
“There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop.”
– Bill Bryson
“No yesterdays on the road.”
– William Least Heat-Moon
“When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.”
– Steve Rushin
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
– Jack Kerouac
“Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.”
– Margaret Lee Runbeck
“And just like that, we’re on our way to everywhere”
– Emery Lord
“Still, round the corner, there may wait, A new road or a secret gate.”
– J. R. R. Tolkien
“Roads were made for journeys, not destinations.”
– Confucius
“I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me.”
– Walt Whitman“
“It’s a road trip! It’s about adventure! . . . It’s not like we have somewhere to go.”
— John Green
“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” –
T.S. Eliot
“My favorite thing to do is to go where I’ve never been.”
– Diane Arbus
“If we were meant to stay in one place, we’d have roots instead of feet.”
– Rachel Wolchin
“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.”
– Erol Ozan
“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”
— Martin Buber
“Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey.”
– Fitzhugh Mullan
“The road is there, it will always be there. You just have to decide when to take it.”
– Chris Humphrey
“You may not find a path, but you will find a way.”
– Tom Wolfe
“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
– David Mitchell
“If you’re on a road trip, you need driving music.”
– Edgar Wright
“God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.”
– Isak Dinesen
Funny Quotes about Road Trips
“A road trip is a way for the whole family to spend time together and annoy each other in interesting new places.”
– Tom Lichtenheld
“The journey is part of the experience – an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.”
– Anthony Bourdain
“Kilometers are shorter than miles. Save gas, take your next trip in kilometers.”
– George Carlin
“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
– Yogi Berra
“It was a practical trip, straight across the country. No pit stops at canned meat museums, no national parks. Just a whole lot of Wynebraskowa.”
― Kari Martindale
“Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.”
– Jerry Seinfeld
“My therapist and I even have a joke about it: s***is truly f***ed up when I start threatening to take a road trip.”
― Chris Gethard
“I guess the lesson is you can’t go everywhere. You should still go everywhere you can.”
– Charles Finch
“The Americans have found the healing of God in a variety of things, the most pleasant of which is probably automobile drives.”
― William Saroyan
“Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
– John Steinbeck
“I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.”
— John Steinbeck
“That’s why I love road trips, dude. It’s like doing something without actually doing anything.”
― John Green
“The concept of time, as it’s commonly understood by normal people with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn’t exist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark, godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days run together like Thanksgiving dinner smothered in gravy. You never really know where you are or what time it is, and the outside world starts to fade away. It’s cool.”
― Tiffanie DeBartolo
“If you’re not lost, you’re not much of an explorer.”
– John Perry Barlow
“It doesn’t matter how old you get, buying snacks for a road trip should always look like an unsupervised 9 year old was given $100.”
— Source unknown
“Road trips required a couple of things: a well-balanced diet of caffeine, salt, and sugar and an excellent selection of tunes—oh, and directions.”
–Jenn McKinlay
“The entire road trip could be summed up as one giant attempt to keep from crashing the car during fits of rage and fits of hysteria.”
– Kari Martindale
“According to the map, we’ve only gone four inches.”
– Dumb & Dumber
“In 1903 the Wright brothers invented airplanes, because in 1902 they took a road trip across the country with their family.”
– Bill Engvall
“I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.” – Susan Sontag
Road Trip Captions From Songs
“On the road again / Goin’ places that I’ve never been / Seein’ things that I may never see again / And I can’t wait to get on the road again”
– Willie Nelson, “On The Road Again”
“So, remember when we were driving, driving in your car / Speed so fast felt like I was drunk / City lights lay out before us / and your arms felt nice wrapped around my shoulders / and I had a feeling that I belonged / and I had a feeling I could be someone.”
— Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”
“Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long / If you’re going my way, I wanna drive it all night long.”
— Rascal Flatts, “Life Is a Highway”
“I got a blacked out Chevrolet / You don’t have a destination / Traveling where the wind will take us. That might be from place to place.”
— Khalid, “Let’s Go”
“Road trippin’ with my two favorite allies / Fully loaded we got snacks and supplies / It’s time to leave this town, it’s time to steal away. /Let’s go get lost anywhere in the U.S.A.”
– Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Road Trippin’
“Bobbin’ to the music / This is how we do it, all night (all night) / Breezin’ down the freeway / Just me and my baby, in our ride / Just me and my boss / No worries at all / Listening to the Aston Martin music, music.”
— Rick Ross, “Aston Martin Music”
“I drove all night to get to you.”
— Cyndi Lauper, “I Drove All Night”
“I’ve never been there but the brochure looks nice / Jump in, let’s go / Lay back, enjoy the show.”
— Sheryl Crow, “Everyday Is A Winding Road”
“Baby, you got the keys / Now shut up and drive”
— Rihanna, “Shut Up and Drive”
“Get your motor runnin’ / Head out on the highway / Lookin’ for adventure…”
– Steppenwolf, “Born to be Wild”
“If you ever plan to motor west / Travel my way, take the highway that is best / Get your kicks on Route sixty six.”
— Natalie Cole, “Route 66”
Road Trip Caption Ideas
“Always take the scenic route.” – Unknown
“It feels good to be lost in the right direction.” – Unknown
“Happiness is a road trip.” — Unknown
“I’m not lost. I’m exploring.” – Jana Stanfield
“There’s nowhere to go but everywhere…” – Jack Kerouac
It doesn’t matter where you’re going. It’s who you have beside you.” — Unknown
“Let’s travel where the wifi is weak.” – Unknown
“Wherever you go, go with all your heart!” – Confucius
“It is better to travel well than to arrive.” – Buddha
“The mountains are calling and I must go.” — John Muir
“Fill your life with adventures, not things.” — Unknown
“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
“Little by little, one travels far.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
“To the tourist, travel is a means to an end; to the traveller, it’s an end in itself.” — Marty Rubin
“The high road of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.” ― Aaron Lauritsen
“Good friends follow you anywhere.” – Winnie the Pooh
“We take photos as a return ticket to a moment otherwise gone.” – Katie Thurmes
“Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.” – Paul Brandt
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustave Flaubert
“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it’s lethal.” – Paulo Coelho
Pin These Road Trip Quotes & Captions
Allison Green is a former teacher who has been travel blogging since 2016. She has a Masters in Teaching and a B.A. in English and Creative Writing. Her blog posts merge her background as an educator with her experience traveling to 70+ countries to encourage ethical, meaningful travel. She has been a speaker at the World Travel Writers Conference and her writing, photography, and podcasting work has appeared in National Geographic, CNN Arabic, CBC Canada, and Forbes, amongst others. Now a full-time traveler, she has lived in Prague, Sofia, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay Area.