Reinhold Messner Quotes

I became famous for the fact that I would break many, many limits. People said, 'He does all these crazy things.' But oddly it was a crazy thing only because scientists and climbers said, 'Everest and the 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen - impossible. Messner is becoming sick in his head.'

I'd rather climb Everest than go for a walk in the park.

Climbing is unadulterated hard labor. The only real pleasure is the satisfaction of going where no man has been before and where few can follow.

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.

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.

I'm kind of obsessed by Everest and all those men that mountaineer and take themselves to extreme limits. Having gone back to Scotland to work on Outlander, I've been climbing a lot and getting out in the Highlands.

For us the mountains had been a natural field of activity where, playing on the frontiers of life and death, we had found the freedom for which we were blindly groping and which was as necessary to us as bread.

The people that first climbed Mt. Everest weren't scientists, right, they were adventurers. If you're an adventurer, you want to go yourself. It's different than a scientist, who is simply wanting to learn.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

I flew aeroplanes, parachuted, walked on my own across the Himalayas - you name it; if it was dangerous, I did it.

I'm a man's man. I go out climbing and live outdoors.

I'm an explorer.

Mountaineering is one of the most difficult sports - we are away from routine life for days, living in tents, and it requires high degree of physical and mental strength.

I spent the night on a sliver of rock high up on the east face of Long's Peak, climbing with Tom Frost, and slept at the icy feet of the Dru, listening to the lightning crack above me and the thunder roll down. I only did it to write about it. I would never go up on the Grotto Wall for fun.

I enjoyed climbing with other people, good friends, but I did quite a lot of solo climbing, too.

Like solo sailors venturing into the Southern Ocean, climbers are seduced by risk. The desire to push to a summit or scale a rock face is so strong that they consciously or subconsciously minimize safety precautions drilled into their brains.

Space only becomes ordinary when the frontier is no longer being breached.

Explorers have to be ready to die lost.

You'll never be disappointed if you always keep an eye on uncharted territory, where you'll be challenged and growing and having fun.

If I know I make this much trouble, I never climb Everest.

Meeting Australian mountaineer and author Tim Macartney-Snape when I was 16 in 1994 had a big impact on me. His ascent of Everest from sea to summit captured my imagination.

I want to explore the world properly, to be able to write about and take pictures of all kinds of different cultures. Just be an explorer or adventurer. I also love extreme sports.

I am immediately disinterested when I hear mountain-climbing stories.

Uncharted territory is a good place to be in.