John Frankenheimer Quotes

If I was a businessman, I could have made a huge amount of money. But none of that really crossed my mind while I was young and traveling.

I was doing stunts for money, not for fame.

All my life the only thing I've been good at has been climbing and throwing myself off big things.

And I would never accept a film because of the money. I have enough money.

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films.

I never turned down a movie because they wouldn't give me enough money.

I have done everything I have ever wanted to do. I have swum with tiger sharks, been charged by lions and elephants. I have been shot three times, chased by crocodiles and, God be praised, I've made enough money that I can continue to do all the things I want to for as long as I am able.

I'm going to Malaysia to try and win a million dollars... how exciting is that?

I considered going into business or becoming a lawyer - not for the money, but for the thrill of problem-solving.

I get to do the most amazing things. We call it Host in Peril quite often, because people love to see me risk my life or be in danger.

I enjoy the risk of bungee-jumping. I used to pay money to do it. Now, it's the opposite. I get paid to do action.

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 was always an adrenaline junkie, always competitive, always a speed freak.

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

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

The ship is safest when it is in port, but that’s not what ships were built for.

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.

Safe is good for sidewalks and swimming pools, but life requires risk if we are to get anywhere.

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.

Do you think the people who were trying to reach to the Everest were not full of doubts? For a hundred years, how many people tried and how many people lost their lives? Do you know how many people never came back? But, still, people come from all over the world, risking, knowing they may never return. For them it is worth it - because in the very risk something is born inside of them: the center. It is born only in the risk. That's the beauty of risk, the gift of risk.

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

I love a challenge, and trying to become the first person to break the speed of sound in freefall is a challenge like no other.

In Italy the Coach is a paratrooper who jumps out of the plane but doesn't know if the parachute will open or not.

I can't count the number of people I've talked to over the course of my career who have said to me that the thing that they most regret is the one time they did something just for the money.

The definition of adventure depends upon how boring your life is.