Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Those that reach their goals perish.
Bolts are the murder of the impossible.
I am not an anarchist, but I am anarchistical.
Crossing the Gobi was a real milestone for me.
I am a South Tyrolean. I identify with this land.
I am my own home, and my handkerchief is my flag.
A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one.
I didn’t go up there to die. I went up there to live.
Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are dangerous.
Each mountain in the Dolomites is like a piece of art.
The Slovenians are the very best climbers in the world.
Once you lose your credibility, you can never restore it.
Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous.
All nationalism is dangerous; all religions are dangerous.
Without the possibility of death, adventure is not possible.
I produce schnapps on my farm but I'm not fond of drinking it.
I started the whole 'Into Thin Air' thing - nothing I'm proud of.
I had no ghost writers for the books - I wrote every line myself.
I have always said that a mountain without danger is not a mountain.
I can't tell people to love mountains. They have to find their own way.
Fame is very heavy. When there are large crowds, I'm unable to handle it.
This is one of my definitions of mountaineering: to go where others do not.
The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.
For me, imagination is more important in climbing than muscle or daredevil antics.
I like Nietzsche. I quote him in many of my books. He was born 100 years before me.
Albert Frederick Mummery and Chris Bonington are the British climbers I most admire.
Traditional alpinism is to go where the others are not going and to be self-reliant.
I want to solve a climbing problem in the mountains, not in the sporting goods store.
I go to the mountains for an adventure and each time I pray I will get up and down again.
The mountains are dangerous. Only an unintelligent person will say they are not dangerous.
Every week someone rings me up wanting to open a new Messner museum, but I'm not interested.
Climbing is not a competition, and you cannot talk in terms of 'greatest,' it means nothing.
On Mount Everest it feels as if you are in the womb, but on K2 you are always out on the edge.
In politics, you have to compromise from morning to evening. Democracy is the art of compromise.
My father had been a Wehrmacht officer in the second world war and was a violent and damaged man.
To me, it's just not that important whether someone climbs the Eigerwand in ten hours or in three.
All the Yeti footprints are all the same bear. The Yeti isn't a fantastic figure. The Yeti is reality.
I was 5 when I went up my first 10,000 ft mountain, with my parents, and I have been climbing ever since.
I want to look into the dark spaces in people's souls. At what happens to us when we go to the mountains.
When I held in my hands the remains of Gunther, I had a strong feeling, like a phantom pain of an amputee.
The art of climbing is to go where you go knowing that you could die, but you don't die. That is adventure.
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 always at my best when I was learning, when I was curious. When I had yet to see past the next horizon.
I would never bring a flag on the summit. If somebody is climbing for a country he is not normal, he is sick.
A good expedition doesn't need a leader at all. You are deciding day by day, discussing it in a democratic way.
I learned to ski in the Dolomites at the age of five. Ski lifts didn't exist then, so I did everything on foot.
I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.
Life is about daring to carry out your ideas. And for me, it always comes back to the wilderness, nature, mountains.
Before kids, I was really going to the limit. Afterwards, I was approaching the limit but then maybe turning around.
The museum at Ortles is dedicated to the world of ice so we wanted visitors to feel like they were inside a glacier.