Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We set ourselves limits, but we are all strong enough to aim higher, to achieve our goals. All we have to do is find such strength within ourselves. Know how to develop it.
Trying to connect to the moment, that move, that breath - this is what I have been striving for; finding the oneness that can exist with all the things around and inside me.
Climbing is individual thing, it's a reflection of yourself. When you put up a route you're looking at yourself. If you chisel holds, it's your responsibility, nobody else's.
The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won't happen if you compromise away the entire process.
They do not signify, these landscapes of the mind, with their shocking instants of awareness. They merely resonate, like the chemistry of lovers, throughout our solitary lives
I've never really understood the criticism that climbing is inherently selfish, since it could equally be argued about virtually any other hobby or sport. Is gardening selfish?
I wanted to distance myself from those pasty faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I was going to become a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.
My friends like to remind me that I have relatively weak fingers. Aerobic strength and general endurance have come easy, but finger strength has always been my biggest weakness.
It's more of an adventure when you set off into unknown territory, and there's nothing like that feeling you get when you discover a place on the Earth where no one has ever been.
The first ascent of Everest came at a time when humanity needed relief from two world wars. It was a unifying and inspiring event, signifying the drive to reach our greatest potential.
I accept the consequences of all that I do. No matter what we do with our lives, our bodies are temporary. We're all going to die, and I'd rather die climbing than doing anything else.
Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.
I'm kind of like a samurai. They say if you want to be a samurai, you can't be afraid of dying, and as soon as you flinch, you get your head cut off. I'm not afraid of losing this business.
People think I just walk up to a sheer cliff and climb it with no knowledge of anything, when in reality, there's tons and tons of information out there, and I'm already well tapped into it.
For me, the most relevant factor in my ability to perform well on the rock has to do with my love of climbing. After nearly thirty years of climbing, I still love to do it whenever possible!
One thing I did not want to change, even if we got serious, work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis. We all had to come to work on the balls of our feet and go up the stairs two at a time.
Climbing is a process - like yoga or running. We want to go to the spots where we're barely able to hold on. Those are the climbs that force us to become better athletes and grow as climbers.
One of the things that separates climbing from other sports is how independent and personal it is. With most sports, you either win or lose, but climbing is about your own personal experience.
I find that rock climbing is the finest, most healthiest sport in the whole world. It is much healthier than most; look at baseball, where 10 000 sit on their ass to watch a handful of players
We took special pride in the fact that climbing rocks and icefalls had no economic value in society...We were like a wild species living in the edges of an ecosystem - adaptable, resilient and tough.
There's a constant tension in climbing, and really all exploration, between pushing yourself into the unknown but trying not to push too far. The best any of us can do is to tread that line carefully.
Hire extremely independent, intelligent, and passionate people, not necessarily "experts." Maybe three or four of my employees have MBAs, and those guys aren't necessarily at the top of the food chain.
I learned that life is about the people around you and the people you give back to. That's what parenting is: You're not there for yourself; you're there for your offspring and everyone else around you.
The secret to happiness is to be working at your passion. If you want to be miserable, lead a desperate life like everybody else where they drag their asses to work everyday because they hate their job.
My sister does all this community-service type stuff in Portland that makes the world a much better place. And I make as much in a two-day commercial shoot as she does in five years, which is ridiculous.
Climbing is a full-body sport from your fingers to your toes, but at the same time, it's like a dance on the rock. It's about being strong and fit but also graceful and elegant and efficient on the rock.
From a climbing standpoint, gravity is the adversary. You and your fellow humans are striving together to get to the same place at the same time. And I think that's a really good way for humans to interact.
I was 19 when my father died from a heart attack. He was a 55-year-old college professor and had led what was by all appearances a risk-free life. But he was overweight, and heart disease runs in our family.
The rules of the game must be constantly updated to keep up with the expanding technology. Otherwise we overkill the classic climbs and delude ourselves into thinking we are better climbers than the pioneers.
Man or woman, you have to have the mental characteristics, the ability to concentrate, the focus, the flexibility, where women have the advantage, and strength-to-weight ratio. It does depend on the raw power.
Big climbs energize me. It's all the other aspects of being a pro-climber that wear me down. The travel and expeditions and training can become pretty tiring. But the actual big climbs - that's what I live for.
I make a fair amount of my food choices for environmental-type reasons than nutrition or taste. I'm trying to minimize impact, which is something most people don't necessarily think about when they're shopping.
A hangboard is a little piece of wood with edges, holes, and slopes. There's different strategies for different things - hanging, varying grips, adding weight. If I do a hard finger workout, I'm definitely sore.
The whole purpose of climbing something like Everest is to effect some sort of spiritual and physical gain. But if you compromise the process you’re an asshole when you start out and an asshole when you get back.
During the sixties, all the risk-type sports were very popular, because everybody was rebelling against their parents, or rebelling against the whole system. But those days are over. This is the day of conservatism.
Man may be doomed to loss, sorrow, and desolation, but if he tries his strength and will, however briefly, upon the indifferent vast hostility of the elements, he rages against futility and asserts his right of being
Much as Africa has leapfrogged straight to mobile phones, it has the opportunity to skip the dirty, grid-tied power plants that currently operate across the developed world and go straight to clean, distributed power.
Climbing is an artistic, creative thing; it's about being spontaneous, traveling, seeing the world, hanging out. It's a balance of setting goals while enjoying the process, being ambitious without being too competitive.
You might get run over; you might get hit by lightning. I mean, who knows? Each day, there is a chance you might die. And there's nothing wrong with that. Every living being on Earth is facing that same existential rift.
Hiring people with diverse backgrounds brings in a flexibility of thought and openness to new ways of doing things, as opposed to hiring clones from business schools who have been taught a codified way of doing business.
My comfort zone is like a little bubble around me, and I've pushed it in different directions and made it bigger and bigger until these objectives that seemed totally crazy eventually fall within the realm of the possible.
...it's the same with business. If you focus on the goal and not the process, you inevitably compromise. Businessmen who focus on profits wind up in the hole. For me, profit is what happens when you do everything else right.
Is climbing, as a passion and as a sport, better off now than it was in the past? We can do harder climbs now in faster times - techniques are more refined and equipement more sophisticated - but are we really any better off?
I feel that a lot of human spirituality stems from the belief that we are unique and special in the universe, but maybe we are just what happens when there is proper temperature and proper distance from the right type of star.
Most injuries happen when you're not motivated, too, and you're forcing yourself to do something. Your mind's not aligned with your body and you're just going through the motions. That's when you're most likely to get injured.
There's no difference between a pessimist who says, "Oh it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything." and an optimist who says, "Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyways. Either way, nothing happens."
Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf.
I like to have a connection with the elements and the earth. Rock is the skin of the planet, and you can learn something from the rock, but you need to communicate with element. You have to be part of the element, not fight it.
I'm the company philosopher and the burr in the saddle. I'm the one who says we need to try harder, improve the quality of our products, become a part of the political process, help elect people who are good for the environment.
Nature doesn't like empires. It doesn't like accumulation in one place, it doesn't like monoculture. It's always trying to make diverse species. It wants to spread everything out. And we're constantly trying to hold everything in.