Ranulph Fiennes Quotes

Meteorite hunting is not for wimps. The best places to look are also the coldest and windiest. You need very old ice, and you need wind, lots of it, strong and unrelenting. Antarctica fits the bill.

You know, once something freezes, it's solid. That's the key to the arctic - they didn't fear the cold, they made use of it.

The idea of victimage is a dreadful thing, a product of a safe middle-class perspective. What people who are not safe develop is a tragic wisdom, a wisdom that embraces contradiction and seeks a sense of balance rather than going to extremes.

At each of these northern posts there were interesting experiences in store for me, as one who had read all the books of northern travel and dreamed for half a lifetime of the north; and that was - almost daily meeting with famous men.

Going to the Arctic was immense for me.

The regions of the North Pole situated within the eighty-fourth degree of north latitude have not yet been utilized, for the very good reason that they have not yet been discovered.

I seemed to vow to myself that some day I would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till I came to one of the poles of the earth, the end of the axis upon which this great round ball turns.

If you are going to do a film about the South Pole, the chances are that you will film it in Hawaii! Whatever is most difficult, you will get to do it.

I have a number of places on my wish list, including Antarctica, the Norwegian fjords, and the Amazon. I have a passion for wilderness, and Siberia is on my list - however, that may be a bridge too far.

I started traveling in the Arctic in 1991, so I experienced the ice in winter and spring. The seasonal sea ice, it has a long season. It starts in September and ends in June.

I get cold - really cold - when I travel.

Now my eyes are turned from the South to the North, and I want to lead one more Expedition. This will be the last... to the North Pole.

Weather can kill you so fast. The first priority of survival is getting protection from the extreme weather.

Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green.

Rivalry is one of the factors pushing me. While my back was turned, the Norwegians managed to achieve the first Arctic crossing in winter. I didn't want the same to happen in the Antarctic.

Environmental scientists in Canada said it was impossible for me to get to the Pole in 2004... I said 'no,' it's still OK, and I can still get there, and I did.

I've been to the Titanic in a yellow submarine and the North Pole in a Russian nuclear ice breaker.

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.

To get the feel of the polar night, I went back to Spitsbergen in winter. I went snowshoeing in the dark and experimented with headlamps and climbed a glacier in driving snow.

If it's enough money, I'll play the North Pole.

Were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians.

Do you know the difference between liberals and cannibals? Cannibals only eat their enemies.

Much of the research into humans' risk-avoidance machinery shows that it is antiquated and unfit for the modern world; it is made to counter repeatable attacks and learn from specifics. If someone narrowly escapes being eaten by a tiger in a certain cave, then he learns to avoid that cave.

The area inside the Arctic Circle contains 8 percent of the earth’s surface and 15 percent of its land…. The Arctic produces 40 percent of the world’s palladium, 20 percent of its diamonds, 15 percent of its platinum, 11 percent of its cobalt, 10 percent of its nickel, 9 percent of its tungsten, and 8 percent of its zinc.

Watching a documentary with people hacking their way through some polar wasteland is merely a visual. Actually trying to deal with cold that can literally kill you is quite a different thing.