Edmund Hillary Quotes

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

I will come again & conquer you because as a mountain you can't grow, but as a human, I can

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

With practice and focus, you can extend yourself far more than you ever believed possible.

Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but I'll beat you the next time because you've grown all you are going to grow... but I'm still growing!

You don't have to be a hero to accomplish great things---to compete. You can just be an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

Life's a bit like mountaineering - never look down.

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.

Motivation is the single most important factor in any sort of success.

I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a yeti.

Challenge is what makes men. It will be the end when men stop looking for new challenges.

Nothing can replace courage, a resounding motivation and that little bit of luck.

The Sherpas play a very important role in most mountaineering expeditions, and in fact many of them lead along the ridges and up to the summit.

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.

It's not the moutain we conquer but ourselves.

I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur.

Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims

Strong motivation is the most important factor in getting you to the top

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

As a youngster I was a great dreamer, reading many books of adventure and walking lonely miles with my head in the clouds.

Despite all I have seen and experiences, I still get the same thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb toward it.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be taken from Auckland Grammar down to the Tangariro National Park for a skiing holiday.

Boredom has always been a problem.

My most important projects have been the building and maintaining of schools and medical clinics for my dear friends in the Himalaya and helping restore their beautiful monasteries, too.

It's not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.

I was a dreamer when I was at high school and even primary school. I used to dream about doing adventurous things.

Everest you won't change, but I will get better...I will conquer you.

I have a number of heroes I still have warm feelings about. [Derek] Shackleton, for instance, was definitely, and still is, one of my great heroes.

I've always hated the danger part of climbing, and it's great to come down again because it's safe.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

I still had the same affection for New Zealand as I've always had. Didn't change at all.

Some day I'm going to climb Everest.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I've - if it did occur - that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

I found fear stimulating. Particularly after you've done something that you'd been frightened of at the time, but you carried through and did the job.

I really haven't liked the commercialization of mountaineering, particularly of Mt. Everest. By paying $65,000, you can be conducted to the summit by a couple of good guides.

It's all bullshit on Everest these days.

My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.

When you're climbing at high altitudes, life can get pretty miserable.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I've been called a great adventurer.

I did have my moments of despair. It was certainly not - it's not an experience I would like to have again. And then June came along.

I have no desire to live anywhere else but New Zealand. I've had the good fortune to travel widely around the world, but New Zealand is home - and I like to be here. I'm proud to be a New Zealander.

Once I've decided to do something, I do usually try to carry it through to fruition.

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

If I'm selecting a group, the first thing I look for is a record of achievement . . . If (candidates achieve) in small things, there's a very good chance they'll perform well in big things.

My mother really was the strength in our family. She would sort of keep us in line and I admired her very much .

On the summit of Everest, I had a feeling of great satisfaction to be first there.

I never talk about being leaders and all the rest of it. I can only remember one or two occasions in my life when I actually issued orders, and I felt thoroughly miserable after doing it.