Levi-Strauss - Motivation of travel

"In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth, such as [brazilwood and pepper, which] added a new range of sense experience to a civilization which had never suspected its own insipidity. . .[From] these same lands our modern Marco Polos now bring back the moral spices of which our society feels an increasing need as it is conscious of sinking further into boredom, but that this time they take the form of photographs, books, and travelers tales."

- Claude Levi-Strauss on the motivation of travel