Climbing is a great game-great not in spite of the demands it makes, but because of them. Great because it will not let us give half of ourselves-it demands all of us. It demands our best.

Before the deed comes the thought. Before the achievement comes the dream. Every mountain we climb, we first climb in our mind.

Instead of the god of security, we bow to the greater god of freedom, the freedom to take risks and master danger in order to be intensely alive.

With the best equipment in the world the man with poor judgment is in mortal danger.

Better we raise our skill than lower the climb

A first ascent is a creation in the same sense as is a painting or a song

A simple equation exists between freedom and numbers: the more people, the less freedom.

The rock is a field of battle between our weakness and our strength.

In the world of today, human desires far supersede human needs. Waste, as you can see, is the result of all of those contradictions. That is how we ended up complicating our world.

I respect Billy Joel, but I'm not a guy who's gonna sit down and listen to the entire 'Essential Billy Joel.'

Creativity goes beyond what you already know. What you know is just knowledge.

Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.

I know this is maybe naive, but one day I hope there will be peace in the world. Maybe one day the flowers will come back.

It was not that Adam ate the apple for the apple's sake, but because it was forbidden. It would have been better for us-oh infinitely better for us-if the serpent had been forbidden

Excuses are tools of the incompetent

We've become so glorified in the movie-star system that it's become this artificial royalty. The truth is that we're circus clowns.

You have to, at least from a distance, look as if you know what you're doing, and I can manage that.