Top 114 Quotes & Sayings by Reinhold Messner
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an Italian explorer Reinhold Messner.
Last updated on September 11, 2024.
I am not made for lonely expeditions. In the sixties, I climbed during the day so I wouldn't have to be alone. I finally learned to stay up for weeks in the high altitude all by my own without being afraid.
A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.
The art of climbing is to go where you go knowing that you could die, but you don't die. That is adventure.
On Mount Everest it feels as if you are in the womb, but on K2 you are always out on the edge.
For me, climbing has always been about adventure and that involves difficulties, danger and exposure, so I deliberately set out to climb with as little equipment as possible.
A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one.
Alpinism means you go by yourself with your own responsibility, knowing that you could die. But Everest now is more like ski tourism: preparing the piste, helping people go up, setting oxygen bottles near the summit.
I have a very different fear if I'm all alone in the summit area of Mount Everest and if I know that there is nothing below me, no Sherpa, no tent, no rope.
Mountaineering is over. Alpinism is dead. Maybe its spirit is still alive a little in Britain and America, but it will soon die out.
Ueli Steck, I'm absolutely certain, had a very strong inner drive to keep pushing. He set very high standards for himself.
People don't like reality, they like crazy stories.
I started the whole 'Into Thin Air' thing - nothing I'm proud of.
I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.
I learned to ski in the Dolomites at the age of five. Ski lifts didn't exist then, so I did everything on foot.
Look, I do not control alpinism. But maybe I was too successful. Many in the mountaineering scene - journalists, second-rate climbers, lecturers, so-called historians - had a problem with me for many years.
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 museum at Ortles is dedicated to the world of ice so we wanted visitors to feel like they were inside a glacier.
Anyone who ever witnessed Ueli Steck flying up the Eigerwand would know that he was always in control of his actions. He was always moving with immense precision and a sense of safety.
Fame is very heavy. When there are large crowds, I'm unable to handle it.
I have always said that a mountain without danger is not a mountain.
For me, imagination is more important in climbing than muscle or daredevil antics.
I'm a rock climber, a high-altitude climber, an adventurer, a storyteller through my museums, and a writer of more than 50 books.
Climbing is more of an art than a sport. It's the aesthetics of a mountain that compels me. The line of a route, the style of ascent. It is creative.
Life is about daring to carry out your ideas. And for me, it always comes back to the wilderness, nature, mountains.
In politics, you have to compromise from morning to evening. Democracy is the art of compromise.
There are three elements of mountaineering - difficulty, danger, and exposure. Difficulty is the technical aspect of it. Danger, it is best to avoid, but some people like to increase danger to a point where their success is dependent only on luck. And exposure, which is what truly defines Alpinism, is what you face in wild nature.
The Dolomites are the most beautiful rock mountains in the world, but in a few million years they will just be desert.
My father blamed me for my brother Gunther's death, for not bringing him home. He died in an avalanche as we descended from the summit of Nanga Parbat, one of the 14 peaks over 8,000m, in 1970. Gunther and I did so much together. It was difficult for my father to understand what it was like up there.
All nationalism is dangerous; all religions are dangerous.
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.
My father had been a Wehrmacht officer in the second world war and was a violent and damaged man.
All the Yeti footprints are all the same bear. The Yeti isn't a fantastic figure. The Yeti is reality.
Every week someone rings me up wanting to open a new Messner museum, but I'm not interested.
In the West, the art of rock climbing is growing because it has to do with less risk, good muscles. But the people seeking high goals in high places are in Eastern Europe, and they reach their goals because they are willing to suffer more.
The cliches that circulate in the German media about Joachim Sauer are a total fallacy. The fact is that he's his own man. He's witty, he's profound, he can be incredibly funny, and he's an extremely bright guy.
Out of all the climbers of this generation, I was the one who became known to the larger public. Many of them - not all of them, but many of them - understood they had only one chance to use me for their personal gain. And it's very easy to use me.
A good expedition doesn't need a leader at all. You are deciding day by day, discussing it in a democratic way.
Ninety per cent of the tourists climbing big mountains are on 10 mountains - and one million mountains in the world are empty.
In climbing there is no question of right or wrong. Moral right or wrong, that is a religious question, they have nothing to do with anarchical activity, and classical mountaineering is a completely anarchical activity.
I can't tell people to love mountains. They have to find their own way.
I produce schnapps on my farm but I'm not fond of drinking it.
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.'
Albert Frederick Mummery and Chris Bonington are the British climbers I most admire.
Each mountain in the Dolomites is like a piece of art.
By climbing mountains we were not learning how big we were. We were finding out how breakable, how weak and how full of fear we are.
Once you lose your credibility, you can never restore it.
The mountains are dangerous. Only an unintelligent person will say they are not dangerous.
To me, it's just not that important whether someone climbs the Eigerwand in ten hours or in three.
I was 5 when I went up my first 10,000 ft mountain, with my parents, and I have been climbing ever since.
Climbing is all about freedom, the freedom to go beyond all the rules and take a chance, to experience something new, to gain insight into human nature.
William Blake said 200 years ago that when man and mountains meet, something big is happening. I'm searching for the 'big.'
Traditional alpinism is to go where the others are not going and to be self-reliant.
I was always at my best when I was learning, when I was curious. When I had yet to see past the next horizon.
I think my cultural work is more important than the adventures I did. The adventures are not important for human beings. It's the conquering of the useless.
My aim is not just to help preserve what is left of mountain life, but to create a centre where people can study and learn about it.
Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are dangerous.
When I lost seven of my toes on Nanga Parbat and small parts of my fingertips I knew I'd never be a great rock climber. So I specialized in high-altitude climbing.
I learned a lot from more experienced mountaineers, such as Peter Habeler, but by the time I was about 21 I reckoned I had learned all that I needed to make me technically self-sufficient anywhere.
I have the feeling that behind a certain dimension we cannot anymore see, understand, feel, smell, hear - nothing. What people are calling God I am not defining, but I am a 'possibilitiest.'
Climbing is not a competition, and you cannot talk in terms of 'greatest,' it means nothing.
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