Committee Member Quotes in Kon-Tiki (2012)

Thor Heyerdahl: [Talking with three National Geographic's members] Gentlemen. Your magazine will be with me on a raft. At the mercy of the winds, all the way to Polynesia. It is further than from Chicago to Moscow. Here to here.

[pointing it in a map behind him]

Committee Member: You'll have some sort of engine in case of emergency?

Thor Heyerdahl: No. Absolutely not. We will surrender to the current and the wind... like Tiki did.

Committee Member: [curious] And by undertaking this extraordinary voyage, you are proving?

Thor Heyerdahl: That the oceans were not barriers, but roads. Not impediments, but pathways. I will prove that South American people sailed to Polynesia...

Committee Member: [refused] Every schoolboy knows that Polynesia was peopled from Asia, not South America.

Thor Heyerdahl: And it is my job as a scientist to prove those schoolboys, and those who quote them, wrong.

[turning to the map]

Thor Heyerdahl: Ancient man, being sun worshipers...

Committee Member: [interrupting Thor] Mr. Heyerdahl. Doubtless the story of Norwegians drowning in the pacific will sell a lot of magazines. But not this one.

Thor Heyerdahl: [angry] This is a scientific expedition!

Committee Member: Our magazine has a higher purpose than to finance and enable men bent on suicide. I doubt he'll have any success recruiting anyone for such a voyage.

Committee Member: Mr. Rockne, couldn't football be replaced by some other game? Something less violent?

Knute Rockne: Well, what game would you suggest?

Committee Member: Well, hockey, for instance.

[This answer is greeted by raucous laughter in the committee room]

Knute Rockne: Why, as a matter of fact, I suggested that very idea to Father Callahan, our president. He was downright interested until we came to the use of sticks, and then he threw up his hands. He said, "No... , that game is not for our university. Notre Dame will never endorse any game that puts a club in the hands of an Irishman."