Ueli Steck Quotes

I wonder if it's like this for mountain climbers, he thought. You climb bigger and bigger mountains and you know that one day one of them is going to be just that bit too steep. But you go on doing it, because it’s so-o good when you breathe the air up there. And you know you'll die falling.

I'm not an artist, and I want to take risks, and when the possibility of failure occurs, it's because the idea is all exciting or interesting as a high wire act, and sometimes you've got to fall off, just by virtue of the fact that you're constantly trying to evolve and do new things.

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

I told them, you can succeed - it's not likely the first time, maybe 25 per cent, but you CAN succeed. You can also die. By April 16 they had already been to camp III, well ahead of most teams.

I base jumped off one of the highest buildings in the world.

I used to climb mountains a lot; I decided to go to Pakistan to climb K2, the world's second-highest mountain. I didn't get quite to the top.

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

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.

I started the whole 'Into Thin Air' thing - nothing I'm proud of.

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.'

This is a crazy sport.

I don't think really we need to race in F1 just to risk your life, or to be in danger is nice for the people. I don't think it's really like that.

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

I always wanted to try Mt. Everest since I was a kid. I never thought I would be able to do anything like that.

You can, maybe, do something like Annapurna once in a lifetime. Then don't try to do it again.

There is something addictive in space that makes you want to go back - like the mountain climbers who want to go back to the Himalayas although their fingers were cut by frostbite.

My client loved risk. Risk, I had learned, was a commodity in itself. Risk could be canned and sold like tomatoes.

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.

There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.

I wanted to be able to tell my grandkids one day, "Hey, your grandpa ran into a burning building and survived."

If you're afraid to take risks in anything in life, it's just boredom.

If you don't dare, you are doomed to dullness.

Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!... Oh, to just grip your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds, avoiding collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the time when you're going to smash up. Well, now, that's something! And then go home again after three hours of it... and then to think that tomorrow I can do it all over again!

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.

I’ve found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks.