Top 40 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Climbers

You can’t coach desire, and no matter how fancy your training plan or how high your stated goals are, it comes down to getting out the door and doing the work day after day.

I agree to the fight. The award, which is getting for these hardships, it is exorbitantly large. It is the joy of life.

At its best, climbing becomes a life focus around which everything else must orbit and at its least is an excellent diversion from the real world.

What I saw so clearly when I started climbing was adventure. Difficulty was only an ingredient. I never thought to wonder about grades, just as I never thought to wonder what Tarzan might bench press. I found the closer I moved to sport, the closer I felt to science - and the closer I moved to adventure, the closer I felt to greatness.

Do what you love. Love what you do. Take less. Give more. Never quit. Never follow. Be passionate. Be bold. Be honest. Respect people. Respect the environment. Always bring out the best in your family and friends. Change is the only constant. Fear is an illusion. Attitude is everything.

If the conquest of a great peak brings moments of exultation and bliss, which in the monotonous, materialistic existence of modern times nothing else can approach, it also presents great dangers. It is not the goal of ‘grand alpinisme’ to face peril, but it is one of the tests one must undergo to deserve the joy of rising for an instant above the state of crawling grubs.

As I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was the conqueror and who was the conquered. I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was.

The rest of the world loves soccer. Surely we must be missing something. Uh, isn't that what the Russians told us about communism? There's a good reason why you don't care about soccer - it's because you are an American and hating soccer is more American than mom's apple pie, driving a pick-up and spending Saturday afternoon channel-surfing with the remote control.

I can respect the gulf that separates alpinism from a running race and still appreciate that the physiology that accounts for endurance is the same if you are running a foot race in the city park or front pointing up the second ice field on the north face of the Eiger.

On big routes in big mountains, speed equals safety.

I am not enough to be only in the mountains, not enough to be on an expedition. I believe that if the walks uphill, then with some goal, and that goal is to climb to the top.

All of us knew that climbing was a sure way to stay poor, a lousy way to impress people and definitely no way to meet girls.

The descent is often as much (or more of) a challenge as the climb.

Climbing is a great effort, but the extraordinary pleasure.

In the mountains, fatigue is the biggest controllable limitation that will come between you and success.

Within a month of intense life in the mountains is going through so much, what used to be a period of several years; This is a occupancy for people greedy for life - human life is not enough.

You will never exploit your full technical capacity if your fitness remains a weak link.

Traveling fast over complex technical terrain requires a high level of technical ability and the endurance to support it. These two quite divergent capabilities need to be developed over years of practice. Omitting either limits your potential.

Historically, many of the great names in alpine climbing seemed to have just gone climbing as training. In fact, the model alpinist has often portrayed himself in literature as a half-crazed nonconformist, living life on the edge every moment he's sober enough to climb. It is true that amazing feats of skill and daring have been accomplished using this rather random approach. For some climbers that "life on the edge" approach may be the only way they can accomplish these feats, but there are far better methods to prepare for the challenges of alpine climbing.

You know your life is over when you own a lawnmower.

On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude.

To reach beyond what you are you must ignore the rules and fashions of the day. Or perhaps better yet cast them way out in your peripheral vision where you can still see them but only as a vague reference point. This doesn’t mean that all the rules are gone. It might mean that you adopt a far tighter code of conduct to ensure the necessary level of intensity and adventure.

I'd rather climb 14a and eat whatever I want than climb 14d and measure out my food.

The depth of any story is proportionate to the protagonist's commitment to their goal, the complexity of the problem, and the grace of the solution.

The closer to the top, the more grew in me the belief that it might be fulfilled, which most dreaming.

In no organized sport do the participants have to endure days of struggle just to get to the starting line of their event. The option to drop out of a race that is going badly does not exist for a climber halfway up a big route, and may entail more risk than pushing on. A team of volunteers will not be waiting with warm blankets and hot food at the next bivy ledge. When you reach the summit, having overcome the challenges that inspired you for months or years, you are not at the finish line. The race is not over. You can't relax and let your guard down like a normal athlete.

We'll climb with you and steal your women.

Conventional sports have undergone an evolution in training methods during the last fifty years. Curiosity and the inherent improvement brought about by competition have driven this evolution to a state of high refinement such that today's athletes have a very specialized approach to training at the elite levels.

The simpler we make things, the richer the experiences become.

We cannot lower the mountain, therefore we must elevate ourselves.

Alpinism places unique demands on its practitioners.

Climbers are a universal tribe: we share the knowledge that things are not important. Experience is important. Feeling is important.

If we successful, we will enter into the history of mountaineering, we will have the opportunity to its success to sacrifice our colleagues.

Within alpinism's narrow framework we seek transcendence and relentlessly pursue what remains hidden from us on flat ground: our true selves.

There is no response to stubbornly by many posed the question of the meaning of expeditions in the high mountains. I've never felt the need for such a definition. I walked to mountains and defeated them. That's all.

We climbers have much to learn from the training done in conventional sports.

Many would argue that alpinism is art, not sport.

At a time when you stay at the top, there is no explosion of happiness - happiness is experienced when everything remains in front of you, when you know that you have to a goal a few hundred, a few dozen meters when you are right in front. This is the time of happiness.

The climbing and soloing aren't worth dying for, but they are worth risking dying for.

For me an adventure is something that I can take an active part in but that I don't have total control over.