50 Alaska Quotes About the Last Frontier

By Stephanie Kirby | Published June 15, 2023

If you love the rugged outdoors, you will love these Alaska Quotes!

In 1959 Alaska was the 49th state admitted to the union of the United States.

It is the most northern state and borders Canada to the East, the Bering Strait to the West, the Seas of the Arctic Ocean to the North, and the Pacific Ocean to the South.

Alaska is the largest state in the United States.

However, it is the third least populated due to its rugged geography, cold temperatures, and distance from the rest of the United States.

Alaska is known for its beautiful and rugged outdoors, hunting and fishing, access to sparsely populated forests, rivers, lakes, gold, and Alaskan Native culture.

Take a few minutes to enjoy these Alaska Quotes, and you will be planning a trip there before you know it!

Short Alaska Quotes

Enjoy a few quick quotes about the popular state.

1. “Alaska itself is an unusual state.” — Fareed Zakaria

2. “Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state.” — Edward Abbey

3. “Alaska was the cure to the disease of my despair.” — Summer Lane

4. “What I miss most about living in Alaska is the fishing.” — Darby Stanchfield

5. “The simple fact is this: when you go to Alaska, you get your ass kicked.” — Mark Twight

6. “For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon.” — Sam Abell

7. “There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons, and I want to go back—and I will.” — Robert W. Service

8. “To the lover of wilderness, Alaska is one of the most wonderful countries in the world.” — John Muir

9. “Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become.” — Kristin Hannah

10. “The light in Alaska, in particular, is so beautiful. So beautiful! Such incredible light.” — Sebastiao Salgado

Alaska Quotes About Living in and Visiting the State

Alaska is a one-of-a-kind location to live and visit, as shown in the following quotes.

11. “Moose are the squirrels of Alaska.” — Tim Moon

12. “Just try to be healthy and enjoy Alaska. That’s the best thing.” — Keith Morris

13. “We have a great life here in Alaska, and we’re never going back to America again!” — Homer

14. “I’ve never been to a beach party before. We have gravel-pit parties in Alaska.” — John Gourley

15. “Historically, Alaska is a place that has attracted those fed up with conventionality.” — Bill O’Reilly

16. “I like Alaska for the salmon fishing—it’s fantastic there. I usually stay in a log cabin with no one around for miles.” — Vinnie Jones

17. “There are two kinds of people in Alaska: those who were born here and those who come here to escape something. I wasn’t born here.” — Rachel Clement

18. “Whenever I leave home to film, my wife Marina gets terrified that I’m going to come back having bought a tiny plot of land in rural Alaska.” — Ben Fogle

19. “I consider myself a product of Alaska. The love and the debt that I feel to my home state, you always want your hometown to be the proudest of you.” — Jewel

20. “Nobody is accidentally in Alaska. The people who are in Alaska are there because they choose to be, so they’ve sort of got a real frontier ethic.” — Marcus Sakey

Alaska Quotes About the Last Frontier

These quotes show why Alaska is famously known as the last frontier and what draws people to it so much.

21. “Up here, you can make one mistake. The second one will kill you.” — Kristin Hannah

22. “Yeah. If I were your age, startin’ fresh… Alaska. It’s the last frontier. Up there, you can be anything you want.” — El Camino

23. “I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with figuring out everything that happens here like we have to unravel every mystery.” — John Green

24. “The tall cityscape that was Anchorage encroached on the wide skies. It was like a giant walking and uninhabited, unclaimed land.” — Suzy Davies

25. “I’ve been under the spell of the North ever since my childhood in Alaska. More and more, I’ve been returning to Alaska, ad sometimes my adventures inspire a story.” — William Hobbs

Alaska will leave an imprint on your heart and mind

26. “I’m not someone who can lie on a beach and do nothing. I am not sure what you are supposed to do, so I get bored. I prefer to have a purpose, such as going to Alaska to see orca whales.” — Miranda Richardson

27. “If you ask most wildlife film-makers or biologists what the greatest wildlife spectacle on Earth is, they’ll say wildebeest migration or the Great Barrier Reef—but to me, it’s Alaska in the summer.” — Steve Backshall

28. “My mom, dad, and me were a compact group. They instilled in me a love for the outdoors. On school breaks, we’d go fishing for a week in the wilds of Alaska or Canada. The land was always in their souls.” — John Carter Cash

29. “John Muir, the famous naturalist, wrote in his journal that you should never go to Alaska as a young man because you’ll never be satisfied with any other place as long as you live. And there’s a lot of truth to that.” — Tom Bodett

30. “Like any traveler, I’m always looking for those experiences that are almost unique to any place, and watching films around Alaska of the skies in winter made me want to taste those unworldly showers of light in person.” — Pico Iyer

Alaska Quotes About the Wonder of the State

Learn more about the state’s appeal and how it pulls people in and mesmerizes them.

31. “It’s from an Aleut word, Alyeska. It means ‘that which the sea breaks against,’ and I love that.” — John Green

32. “This was one of the places people told me to go; it was one the big trips that you should see: Alaska.” — Jeff Goldblum

33. “Alaska’s forests are the most welcoming I know. There are no ticks, no snakes, no poison ivy in Alaska.” — Charles Kuralt

34. “I’ve always heard that heli-skiing in Alaska is amazing. I would love to be able to do that at some point in my life.” — Lindsey Vonn

35. “We’ve been some cool places fishing. My parents and my family all went up to Alaska. We fished for king salmon, and that was really neat.” — Luke Kuechly

Quotes about what makes Alaska special

36. “I went to Alaska a while back and surfed the waves generated from a glacier calving, and ever since then, I’ve never been afraid in the ocean.” — Garrett McNamara

37. “Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel and Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics.” — Sloane Crosley

38. “When I was 23, I climbed this mountain in Alaska called Devil’s Thumb alone. It was incredibly dangerous, and I did it because I thought that if I did something that hard and pulled it off, my life was gonna be transformed.” — Jon Krakauer

39. “Kids in Alaska don’t know they’re growing up on the Last Frontier. It’s just what they see on the license plates, and it’s something tourists like to say a lot because they’ve never been around so many mountains and moose before.” — Tom Bodett

40. “Despite everything, every piece of Alaska sang to me. I remembered every curve in the trails, every tree in the forest. It was familiar to me, comfortable. The more I thought about leaving it, the less I liked the idea. This was my home.” — Summer Lane

Additional Alaska Quotes

Enjoy a few more quotes about the state that will encourage you to plan a visit to see it for yourself.

41. “Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a b*tch with a sawed-off shotgun the next.” — Kristin Hannah

42. “Unless we make Christmas an occasion to share our blessings, all the snow in Alaska won’t make it ‘white’.” — Bing Crosby

43. “Two kinds of flocks come up to Alaska, Cora. People running to something and people running away from something. The second kind-you want to keep your eye out for them.” — Kristin Hannah

44. “There’s a lot of people around Alaska now who are actually running the place who claim to just have gone there for the summer once 30 years ago. And that seems to be what happens.” — Tom Bodett

45. “I’d read somewhere that nine out of ten adults in Alaska had a drinking problem. I could believe it. Snow, ice, sleet, wind, the dark night of the soul: what else were you supposed to do?” — T. C. Boyle

Long Alaska quotes that explain more about the state

46. “There’s one place, and one place only, to see polar bears in America. You have to travel to the country’s northernmost point, the very apex of Alaska’s North Slope, to the permafrost shores that stretch out on either side from the Inupiat town of Kaktovik.” — Michael Shnayerson

47. “In terms of wilderness preservation, Alaska is the last frontier. This time, given one great final chance, let us strive to do it right. Not in our generation, nor ever again, will we have a land and wildlife opportunity approaching the scope and importance of this one.” — Mo Udall

48. “It’s not like Alaska isn’t wilderness – it mostly is. But most Alaskans don’t live in the wild. They live on the edge of the wild in towns with schools and cable TV and stores and dentists and roller rinks sometimes. It’s just like anyplace else, only with mountains and moose.” — Tom Bodett

49. “Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives. The bush is an unforgiving place, however, that care nothing for hope or longing.” — Jon Krakauer

50. “As she stares into the cool prisms of blues and whites and the clear parts which fracture the light, she notices something deeper. It is a light from within the ice. It’s beautiful, so she stays.” — Danielle Rohr