Reinhold Messner Quotes

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

If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame.

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.

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.

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

I do not climb really dangerous stuff.

There is such a gauntlet of risk that you go through when you climb up to Everest.

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

Had the Sally never sailed, I should have been preserved from an Evil, which has given me the most uneasiness, and has left the greatest impression and stain upon my Conduct in life...

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

I've become a master of the apology.

Climbing Mount Everest was the biggest mistake I've ever made in my life. I wish I'd never gone. I suffered for years of PTSD and still suffer from what happened. I'm glad I wrote a book about it. But, you know, if I could go back and relive my life, I would never have climbed Everest.

I'm kind of obsessed by Everest and all those men that mountaineer and take themselves to extreme limits.

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.

Adventure has to do with private, personal experiences. But, the possibilities, there are millions of unclimbed mountains - I have seen in the Eastern part of Tibet, mountains 6,000-6,500 meters high, vertical walls twice as tall as the Eiger... but nobody is going there, because they aren't 8,000-meter peaks.

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.

Because it is there [famous explanation for wanting to climb Mount Everest].

Some day I'm going to climb Everest.

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.

There are parallels between filmmaking and climbing mountains just in terms of the commitment it requires, absolute devotion, and the belief that you are going to make a film and that the film is going to be OK, as well as the risks you have to take. You are never going to climb anything great if you don't take risks.

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 knew that I shouldn’t have, but I did it all the same; and there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes, in small characters, set close together.