Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I would never bring a flag on the summit. If somebody is climbing for a country he is not normal, he is sick.
I go to the wild mountains where I am responsible for myself. Step by step I am making sure that I don't die.
I was extremely lucky that I had two great wives. It sounds a bit funny to say that, but it's absolutely true.
I was not a beater of children and as a consequence I've always been, I think, very agreeable and co-operative.
I learned to ski in the Dolomites at the age of five. Ski lifts didn't exist then, so I did everything on foot.
A good expedition doesn't need a leader at all. You are deciding day by day, discussing it in a democratic way.
You never conquer a mountain. You just stand on the top a few moments. Then the wind blows your footprints away.
My mother really was the strength in our family. She would sort of keep us in line and I admired her very much .
I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.
I cannot say to be glad or not glad to be on Everest. It is my life. I have opportunity to be here, so I am here.
One comes to bless the absolute bareness, feeling that here is a pure beauty of form, a kind of ultimate harmony.
I was a dreamer when I was at high school and even primary school. I used to dream about doing adventurous things.
One hour three times per week in the gym is no counterbalance to all of the other behavior in those other 165 hours
Inconsistency, incompetence, and lies are all cut short by the ground. It will stop you if you can't stop yourself.
I strode among giants, friends tell me now, though at the time I felt more like a misfit associating with oddballs.
I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering. Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits.
Before kids, I was really going to the limit. Afterwards, I was approaching the limit but then maybe turning around.
Life is about daring to carry out your ideas. And for me, it always comes back to the wilderness, nature, mountains.
The museum at Ortles is dedicated to the world of ice so we wanted visitors to feel like they were inside a glacier.
It cannot be too often repeated that it is not helps, but obstacles, not facilities, but difficulties that make men.
A person should have wings to carry them where their dreams go, but sometimes a pair of skis makes a good substitute.
There is no joy involved in climbing mountains, there is simply the challenge, the self-invented challenge, the play.
First, I am afraid to die and I love to live. But an adventure is only an adventure when there is the threat of dying.
At 30 I was not quiet enough inside myself. At 40 I was not rich enough. At 50 I was still hoping to change the world.
The Dolomites are the most beautiful rock mountains in the world, but in a few million years they will just be desert.
I left many different mountains but always the gods gave me a chance to go back. I was always going with a quiet foot.
As long as you believe what you’re doing is meaningful, you can cut through fear and exhaustion and take the next step.
But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.
Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.
If you're going climbing with young people, you get very, very used to seeing your climbing partner as a tiny little dot.
I have to admit I do get a bit depressed at times and you know I think about the good old days when I was charging ahead.
As a youngster I was a great dreamer, reading many books of adventure and walking lonely miles with my head in the clouds.
The thing to be wished for, is not that the mountains should become easier, but that men should become wiser and stronger.
Ueli Steck, I'm absolutely certain, had a very strong inner drive to keep pushing. He set very high standards for himself.
William Blake said 200 years ago that when man and mountains meet, something big is happening. I'm searching for the 'big.'
The man coming back from the hard mountain trip is a wiser being, calmer and radiating inside. I'd say momentary liberated.
I was scared many times on Everest, but this is all part of the challenge. When I fell down a crevasse, it was pretty scary.
I had a very strong desire to carry out adventures, but in those early days I didn't actually do any. I just dreamt about it.
Take advantage of the years of pioneering efforts. You might find this boring, as the young want to rush head on, as it were.
Ninety per cent of the tourists climbing big mountains are on 10 mountains - and one million mountains in the world are empty.
The art of climbing is the art of survival. The best climber is the man or woman going in the most crazy places but surviving.
On your own, relying on yourself, you will never feel you are stronger than the mountain, and your respect for the peak grows.
Every type of evil we've got in us is the result of that one true illness of the human mind - that is, of being self-centered.
I don't regard myself as a cracking good climber. I'm just strong in the back. I have a lot of enthusiasm, and I'm good on ice.
I have been in the most dangerous of places just in order to survive. An intelligent man would stay in a safe place to survive.
Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims
I wonder if one can view risk like a drug, beneficial to the organism in the proper dose. Too much or too little may be harmful.
I'm a rock climber, a high-altitude climber, an adventurer, a storyteller through my museums, and a writer of more than 50 books.
Nothing to mountaineering, just a little physical endurance, a good deal of brains, lots of practice, and plenty of warm clothing.
Traditional alpinism is slowly disappearing. It is becoming sport, indoors on small walls with holds where you cannot really fall.