Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
I left many different mountains but always the gods gave me a chance to go back. I was always going with a quiet foot.
The Dolomites are the most beautiful rock mountains in the world, but in a few million years they will just be desert.
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 art of climbing is the art of survival. The best climber is the man or woman going in the most crazy places but surviving.
Ninety per cent of the tourists climbing big mountains are on 10 mountains - and one million mountains in the world are empty.
On your own, relying on yourself, you will never feel you are stronger than the mountain, and your respect for the peak grows.
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.
I'm a rock climber, a high-altitude climber, an adventurer, a storyteller through my museums, and a writer of more than 50 books.
Traditional alpinism is slowly disappearing. It is becoming sport, indoors on small walls with holds where you cannot really fall.
For years I was a rock climber and nothing else. I went to school, yes, and university, yes, but in my heart I was a rock climber.
Mountaineering is over. Alpinism is dead. Maybe its spirit is still alive a little in Britain and America, but it will soon die out.
By climbing mountains we were not learning how big we were. We were finding out how breakable, how weak and how full of fear we are.
My aim is not just to help preserve what is left of mountain life, but to create a centre where people can study and learn about it.
I am not so proud to climb all the 8,000-meter peaks, but I was proud to climb Nanga Parbat solo. That was the most elegant thing I did.
Climbing is more of an art than a sport. It's the aesthetics of a mountain that compels me. The line of a route, the style of ascent. It is creative.
An account of an expedition is not a novel. Therefore an authentic account can never be given, let alone written down by someone who was not present.
I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.
Climbing is all about freedom, the freedom to go beyond all the rules and take a chance, to experience something new, to gain insight into human nature.
I was in continual agony; I have never in my life been so tired as on the summit of Everest that day. I just sat and sat there, oblivious to everything.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
I think my cultural work is more important than the adventures I did. The adventures are not important for human beings. It's the conquering of the useless.
I have a very different fear if I'm all alone in the summit area of Mount Everest and if I know that there is nothing below me, no Sherpa, no tent, no rope.
When I lost seven of my toes on Nanga Parbat and small parts of my fingertips I knew I'd never be a great rock climber. So I specialized in high-altitude climbing.
When I was a small child, I began on small mountains. Now, as I am getting older, the small peaks are getting bigger. If I am lucky, some day I will end on a small peak.
For me, climbing has always been about adventure and that involves difficulties, danger and exposure, so I deliberately set out to climb with as little equipment as possible.
In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
Anyone who ever witnessed Ueli Steck flying up the Eigerwand would know that he was always in control of his actions. He was always moving with immense precision and a sense of safety.
For me the Everest solo was the icing on the cake of my climbs: the highest mountain in the world, during a monsoon, and as far as possible even on a new route, of course without oxygen.
My market value increases with every outside critisism. Therefore, the frequently raised contention that I am the most highly critisized mountaineer does not disturb me in the slightest.
A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.
I am responsible for my brother's death. I feel the guilt of having survived. People say, 'You should be happy. You survived.' But I have this feeling that it is not right that I am alive.
I always take the same perspective with each new adventure. I put myself in the position of being at the end of my life looking back. Then I ask myself if what I am doing is important to me.
I have the feeling that behind a certain dimension we cannot anymore see, understand, feel, smell, hear - nothing. What people are calling God I am not defining, but I am a 'possibilitiest.'
The true alpinist doesn't want any infrastructure, he wants to go into the wild. And the odds of getting killed there are relatively high. And most people are sensible enough not to want that.
Gunther and I always shared the work. Each of us carried his own sleeping bag and tent, and porters carried the rest, until the highest camp, when we were on our own. Nobody helped us up there.
The only possibility to have a knowledge of both the Earth's nature and our own internal nature is through traditional climbing when you go on your own, far from safety, and encounter the unknown.
I learned a lot from more experienced mountaineers, such as Peter Habeler, but by the time I was about 21 I reckoned I had learned all that I needed to make me technically self-sufficient anywhere.
Look, I do not control alpinism. But maybe I was too successful. Many in the mountaineering scene - journalists, second-rate climbers, lecturers, so-called historians - had a problem with me for many years.
I am not made for lonely expeditions. In the sixties, I climbed during the day so I wouldn't have to be alone. I finally learned to stay up for weeks in the high altitude all by my own without being afraid.
The cliches that circulate in the German media about Joachim Sauer are a total fallacy. The fact is that he's his own man. He's witty, he's profound, he can be incredibly funny, and he's an extremely bright guy.
Alpinism means you go by yourself with your own responsibility, knowing that you could die. But Everest now is more like ski tourism: preparing the piste, helping people go up, setting oxygen bottles near the summit.
Around half of the top alpinists have died climbing. Of course if I'm careful and turn back more often than the others, I can increase my chances of survival. But if I hadn't been lucky a few times, I wouldn't be here.
In climbing there is no question of right or wrong. Moral right or wrong, that is a religious question, they have nothing to do with anarchical activity, and classical mountaineering is a completely anarchical activity.
I am not so famous. I'm known in a few countries like Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and around the Alps. Some climbers in Beijing know my name, and some in America, but I am not really famous. It's very relative, my fame.
Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.
In the West, the art of rock climbing is growing because it has to do with less risk, good muscles. But the people seeking high goals in high places are in Eastern Europe, and they reach their goals because they are willing to suffer more.