Robert Ballard

“If you compare NASA's annual budget to explore the heavens, that one year budget would fund NOAA's budget to explore the oceans for 1,600 years.”

“Well, when I was a kid, I grew up in San Diego next to the ocean. The ocean was my friend - my best friend.”

“I would have to say my favorite place on Earth is Bora Bora.”

“I'm a geophysicist and all my earth science books when I was a student, I had to give the wrong answer to get an A. We used to ridicule continental drift. It was something we laughed at. We learned of Marshall Kay's geosynclinal cycle, which is a bunch of crap.”

“I mean, technology is amoral. It has no morality.”

“I am a geologist.”

“I mean, there is amazing amount of oil and gas and other resources out beneath the sea. It's staggering.”

“Forever may it remain that way. And may God bless these now-found souls.”

“I think the most important thing people can do to save our planet and the human race is to empower women!”

“Fifty percent of our country that we own, have all legal jurisdiction, have all rights to do whatever we want, lies beneath the sea and we have better maps of Mars than that 50 percent.”

“So, you know, I think the age of exploration is just beginning, not ending, on our planet.”

“The Titanic will protect itself.”

“Don't confuse facts with reality.”

“What drives me is exploration with a purpose, more the classic Royal Geographical Society genre.”

“I believe in just enriching the economy. And we're leaving so much on the table, 72 percent of the planet.”

“It's not a huge surprise that there are habitations at the bottom of the Black Sea.”

“My family came in 1635 from England and settled in Williamsburg. Shortly after, they split up; half went to New England and half stayed in Virginia. I'm a Virginian Ballard.”

“Where I live in Connecticut was ice a mile above my house, all the way back to the North Pole, about 15 million kilometers, that's a big ice cube. But then it started to melt. We're talking about the floods of our living history.”

“Follow your own passion - not your parents', not your teachers' - yours.”

“I prefer sayings over jokes.”