Tenzing Norgay Quotes

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

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.

On the summit of Everest, I had a feeling of great satisfaction to be first there.

The way to Everest is not a Yellow Brick Road.

People do not wander around and then find themselves at the top of Mount Everest.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

I was scared many times on Everest, but this is all part of the challenge. When I fell down a crevasse, it was pretty scary.

The mission of professional mountain climbers is almost impossibly difficult by design: Their very livelihood is based on achieving the unprecedented. Their expeditions are complicated, exhausting, often life-threatening. Risk is the fuel that keeps them going.

I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.

The Nose is a beautiful route. The best thing is that, in one day, you get to climb so much. You climb and climb and climb the whole day.

Some day I'm going to climb Everest.

I never imagined I could make it to the top of Mount Everest at age 80. This is the world's best feeling, although I'm totally exhausted. Even at 80, I can still do quite well.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you've got people just streaming up the mountain - well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I've been called a great adventurer.

I climbed Mount Everest. I don't quit.

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.

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.

The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this; What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? and my answer must at once be, it is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.

I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally - but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.

I offer my expertise and experience for hire in order to help a group of people reach the summit.

You can get a lawyer with two months off or a New York socialite who wants to play at being Lewis and Clark and put them up there, but Everest is still in charge; it can still kick butt.

Not to be too grandiose about it, but in a way I see myself like Sir Edmund Hillary. The water was my Everest.

I was never comfortable with the risk of climbing in the Himalayas, or the amount of time in idleness that is involved in the Everest expedition.

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.

There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same when you get there.