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79 Best Montana Quotes and Captions About Big Sky Country

If you’re looking for Montana quotes, then you’ve come to the right place!

Montana is one of the most overlooked states when it comes to traveling in America, but it’s one you should check out.

A lot of Montana sayings refer to the beauty of the state and that’s no surprise when you see the images of the scenery.

Montana is blessed with some of the best landscapes in America. The mountains are incredible and the badlands are a beautiful area that’s also home to many dinosaur fossils, reflecting how much history is to be found in the state.

We’ve also included some Montana captions for Instagram that you can use with all the amazing photos you take!

 These quotes about Montana will tell you all about the treasure state and why it’s known as big sky country!

Best Montana Quotes

“I’ve stood outside my house in Montana looking at the northern lights… crackling against the night sky. To me, that’s magic.” – Christopher Paolini

best montana quote

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“We have always been dreamers in Montana.” – Brian Schweitzer

“We need to work our level best in this legislative session to help grow Montana’s economy, so that grandchildren can stay in Montana, grandchildren can visit their grandmother and grandfather by driving across town, not flying across the country.” – Brian Schweitzer

“I have my tombstone already. A tombstone company in the East gave it to me when I jumped Snake Canyon. My plot is in Montana.” – Evel Knievel

“The allure of Montana is like a commitment to a narcotic; you can never use it up or get enough of it. Its wilderness areas probably resemble the earth on the first day of creation.” – James Lee Burke

“My favorite state has not yet been invented. It will be called Montana, and it will be perfect.” – Abraham Lincoln

“I really enjoy my time in Montana.” – Howie Long

I’m in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection. But with Montana, it is love. And it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it.” – John Steinbeck

“My blood, my roots, my soul is in the state of Montana.” – Max Baucus

“There are grander and more sublime landscapes – to me. There are more compelling cultures. But what appeals to me about central Montana is that the combination of landscape and lifestyle is the most compelling I’ve seen on this earth. Small mountain ranges and open prairie, and different weather, different light, all within a 360-degree view.” – Sam Abell

“I absolutely love writing and sharing my enthusiasm with students, and because of ‘Hattie Big Sky,’ Montana holds a special place in my heart.” – Kirby Larson

“I would be happy living on a massive ranch in Montana and not seeing anyone except my friends and family.” – Nick Frost

“It seems to me Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda.” – John Steinbeck

“In Montana, whether you’re a farmer, whether you’re a fisherman… you know that the climate is changing, and we need to do something about it.” – Steve Bullock

“My history was the Western. I grew up with the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid and Bonanza. I felt as much a child of the West as someone born in Montana or Wyoming.” – Clive Sinclair

“I have great faith in the people of Montana; they can’t be bought.” – Jon Tester

“Leaving New York and friends is tough, and there are things about it I still really miss. But Montana is a great place to write.” – Jeff Giles

“Of all the memorable views, the best have been framed by Montana windows.” – William Hjortsberg

Montana Travel Quotes

One of the most interesting facts about Montana is that it’s the fourth-largest state in terms of size. You wouldn’t realise this from looking at a map! What this means is that there are plenty of great places to check out while you’re there. The quotes below will give you a flavor of what you can expect when you’re there!

“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.” – John Steinbeck

montana travel quote

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“We go to Montana every year – that’s where my husband is from – Flathead Lake, Montana, which is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to in my life. It’s amazing that his entire family lives there. There’s waterskiing, jet skiing, and kayaking, and it’s just really fun.” – Kellie Martin

“My father had owned a ranch when he was younger, in Montana, and he remembered riding his horse across the prairie and seeing some large bones sticking out of the ground. He was enough of a geologist, being a sand and gravel man, to have a pretty good notion that they were dinosaur bones.” – Jack Horner

“The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I spent most of my youth in Montana, where there are long, cold winters, but Maine has the coldest winters you could imagine. Not only are they long, not only does it snow, but it gets really damp. It’s a wet cold with a lot of wind.” – Michael Finkel

“I write in two very different places: my desk in Palo Alto, California, is piled high with myriad jumbled books and papers whose stratigraphy is a challenge. Summers in Bozeman, Montana, I write in a spare space, surrounded by interesting rocks and fossils instead of books, on an old oak table with nothing but my laptop.” – Adrienne Mayor

“I have a ranch in Montana, but it’s not a real working ranch. I’ve always liked the outdoors. I come from Texas. My grandfather was a farmer; that’s as close as I come.” – Dennis Quaid

“In ’87 – four years after ‘Sports’ was released – my family and I began vacationing in Montana. I soon bought my first piece of land in Ravalli County, in the western part of the state.” – Huey Lewis

“I moved at age 22 to Montana to be able to walk in really wild woods, where the chances of being killed by a bear or mountain lion are not zero.” – Michael Finkel

“When I was in Greenough, Montana, I came across a bear cub. I was off this path, and I thought, If there’s a bear cub, that means there’s a mother bear somewhere nearby. So I doubled back. If I’d kept going, I’m sure they would have eventually found my sneakers, and that’s about it.” – Al Roker

“I grew up in Colorado and spent my summers in Montana as a ranch hand.” – Chris Eigeman

“Over the years, I found myself traveling parts of the Lewis and Clark Trail, putting my hands in the river where they set out from St. Louis, viewing the Great Falls of Montana, standing by the same Pacific Ocean they saw with such joy.” – Joseph Bruchac

“I had the chance to visit all 56 counties in Montana in my pickup. You can put Washington, D.C., in one corner of our state and put Chicago in the other corner, and that’s the size of my congressional district.” – Steve Daines

“From the time I was a kid, I was crazy about anything having to do with the West. I’d look at all of these photos of Montana, and they all seemed so magical and majestic. I just wanted to go west, and I finally did it when I was barely 21. I went off to volunteer at a Navajo reservation in New Mexico.” – Michael Keaton

“It’s fascinating to go somewhere where you’re away from everything. There are no houses, no buildings, no roads, no people. And for a little less extreme hunting, any place in the West – Colorado, Utah, Montana – that’s just beautiful country.” – Shawn Michaels


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Funny Montana Quotes

“The winter’s a little bit daunting in Montana.” – Phil Jackson

funny montana quote

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“Wyoming is good, but Montana is like heaven on earth.” – Henry Winkler

“I’m outdoors a lot, so I get dark. Guess who gets stopped? I’ve been pulled over, and they ask, ‘Where are you from?’ I say, ‘Montana.’ They say, ‘Are you sure? And I say, ‘I’m reasonably sure I’m from Montana, but you know, this is a dream life.’ You start on this shtick with them and it’s fun.” – Jim Harrison

“I just like to have one foot in Montana and one foot out.” – Max Baucus

“My soul lives in Montana. It’s where I fly-fish for trout.” – Henry Winkler

“The world is full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the further one gets from Missoula, Montana.” – Norman Maclean

“Disney World is an armpit compared to Montana.” – Carl Hiaasen

“In Montana, it is a good idea to keep your hat on your head so the wind doesn’t blow your hair off.” – Ivan Doig

“In Montana, a policeman will pull you over because he is lonely.” – Rich Hall

“The best-kept secret about Montana is the women. They are tough, smart, sexy, and kind-hearted. It’s a lucky guy that ends up with a Montana gal.” – Jeff Ament

Montana Puns and Nicknames

mountains in montana

They say Montana is fairly populated, but it’s actually MT

A trip to Montana? Mount me in!

Let’s play hide and peak in Montana

The sun is shining, I’m going to get my MonTAN on

The Last Best Place

Land of the Shining Mountains

“Oro y Plata” (Gold and Silver)

The Treasure State

Montana Captions for Instagram

montana landscape

You know you’re in Montana when: you hear North Dakota jokes

If you’re lucky enough to live in Montana, you’re lucky enough

Montana: A state that gets so deep into your soul, it hurts when you’re away from it

Montana: where the elevation is usually higher than the town’s population

My Montana Moment

A bad day in Montana is better than a good day anywhere else

Montana: Where there’s enough space to spread your wings and soar

I am so happy that I live in a world where there is a Montana

Quotes About Montana’s History and Culture

“I found my first dinosaur bone when I was 6, growing up in Montana. Ever since then I’ve been interested in dinosaurs.” – Jack Horner

quote about Montana's history

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“Spending two years on my uncle’s ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.” – Robert Duvall

“Before Alaska came along and ruined everything, one of every twenty-five square miles in America was Montanan. This much space has nurtured a healthy Cult of Place in which people find perfection, even divinity in the landscape.” – Ellen Meloy

“My father was an expert hunter, so we ate a lot of wild game when I was growing up in Montana. That helped broaden my palate generally, but I know it informed my distaste for factory farms and unspectacular commercial meat.” – Steve Albini

“It’s easier for me to write certain character types because of my own life experiences, but I find it too artistically limiting to only write about red-headed kids who grew up in small-town Montana. That’s really part of the fun of fantasy, I think. Our imagination is basically unlimited. Okay, that’s a terrifying thing about fantasy, too.” – Brent Weeks

“Our atheism family tradition is traced to a – I don’t know if it was great-great or a great-great-great-grandmother who was a poor Irish-American woman in the 1880s in western Montana.” – Barbara Ehrenreich

“My father was the superintendent of the churches in the state of Montana. He was content in his beliefs. He befit the term ‘true Christian.’ He would turn the other cheek. He was truly a man of peace.” – Phil Jackson

“Every year in late June, Custer’s Last Stand is reenacted on the high plains of Montana. When Custer led out the 7th Cavalry in 2003 – the year I witnessed it – the audience stood and cheered with turbo-charged patriotism.” – Clive Sinclair

“I like to describe ‘Yellowstone’ is ‘The Great Gatsby’ on the largest ranch in Montana. Then it’s really a study of the changing of the West.” – Taylor Sheridan

“Montana’s ranchers raise the best cattle in the world. If Taco Bell needs to beef up, they can give their customers the highest quality meat around by using Montana beef, and in the process, supporting agriculture jobs in Montana.” – Jon Tester

“Richard Hugo taught me that anyone with a desire to write, an ear for language and a bit of imagination could become a writer. He also, in a way, gave me permission to write about northern Montana.” – James Welch

“Summertime in Montana, I become a monosyllabic baboon. I want to ride with the cowboys, go to brandings, doctor cattle, and train my horses. But in a few months, the snow starts to fly. The days become shorter; the yellow color of interior light becomes delicious. I look at my shelves, and every book just glows, and I want to be inside of that.” – Thomas McGuane

“I’m healthy enough to still skate, so I gotta go because growing up I didn’t have – I mean, I grew up in Montana so… there was kind of a little half-pipe in my yard, and that was the extent of the skate terrain in Montana. So I’ve got to go out and make up for lost time.” – Jeff Ament

“When I was born, my father was a copper miner in Butte, Montana. It was a hard-core, blue-collar situation.” – Barbara Ehrenreich

“Montana is perfect for telecommuting because of the quality of life, because our housing prices in most communities are below the national average.” – Greg Gianforte

“In Montana, when we did ‘Return to Lonesome Dove’, we rode on the side of a hill at night in the dark; I was afraid my horse would step on one of the actors playing dead. The director said to leave it to the stunt doubles since they got paid for that.” – William Sanderson

“What I’ve learned, traveling the country and doing book signings, Mama’s biscuits – you know, somebody in Montana’s got their version of Mama’s biscuits, somebody in California’s got their version – so it made me realize that we’re not as regionalized as we think we are.” – Trisha Yearwood

“People across the nation know Montana as ‘Big Sky Country’ or the ‘Last Best Place’ thanks to our stunning landscapes, blue-ribbon trout streams, and welcoming communities. Fewer people recognize that Montana has one of the most competitive business climates to go along with our exceptional quality of life.”Steve Bullock

“Alaska and Montana are not in the south but they definitely form part of the crimson tide of red states where Republicans are dominant.” – Juan Williams

“I hope that there’s a little black boy somewhere in Montana that never thought that he would see a reflection of himself, and he turns on the television, like, ‘Oh my God, thank you.'” – Brain Tyree Henry

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a famous quote about Montana?

“We have always been dreamers in Montana.” – Brian Schweitzer

What is the Montana sunset quote?

“The Montana sunset lay between the mountains like a giant bruise from which darkened arteries spread across a poisoned sky.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald


Thanks for reading my collection of the best Montana quotes! Hopefully, you’ve enjoyed reading and are now considering a trip to this incredible state.

Do you have any other quotes about Montana? If you do, leave them in the comments below. Let me know if you’ve been to Montana and what you think. I’m interested to see what your opinion of the state is!

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