Edmund Hillary Quotes

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

I will come again & conquer you because as a mountain you can't grow, but as a human, I can

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

With practice and focus, you can extend yourself far more than you ever believed possible.

Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but I'll beat you the next time because you've grown all you are going to grow... but I'm still growing!

You don't have to be a hero to accomplish great things---to compete. You can just be an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.

Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

Life's a bit like mountaineering - never look down.

If the going is tough and the pressure is on, If the reserves of strength have been drained and the summit is still not in sight, then the quality to seek in the person is neither great strength nor quickness of hand, but rather a resolute mind firmly set on its purpose that refuses to let its body slack or rest.

I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.

Motivation is the single most important factor in any sort of success.

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.

I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.

Good planning is important. I've also regarded a sense of humor as one of the most important things on a big expedition. When you're in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you're depressed about the chances of success, someone who can make you laugh eases the tension.

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a yeti.

Challenge is what makes men. It will be the end when men stop looking for new challenges.

Nothing can replace courage, a resounding motivation and that little bit of luck.

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.

I have been seriously afraid at times but have used my fear as a stimulating factor rather than allowing it to paralyse me. My abilities have not been outstanding, but I have had sufficient strength and determination to meet my challenges and have usually managed to succeed with them.

The Sherpas play a very important role in most mountaineering expeditions, and in fact many of them lead along the ridges and up to the summit.

It's not the moutain we conquer but ourselves.

No one remembers who climbed Mount Everest the second time.

I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur.

Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims

Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.

Strong motivation is the most important factor in getting you to the top

I think my strengths perhaps are that I'm determined. I may not be the best climber in the world, but I do like to sort of succeed and so that tends to drive me on, as it were, and I don't give up too easily.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

I'm a very, very modest person and with limited abilities. I do have the wish to succeed in anything I undertake, and that does help out, but, in general, there are so many other people who are skilled in their field that I feel very ordinary.

As a youngster I was a great dreamer, reading many books of adventure and walking lonely miles with my head in the clouds.

Despite all I have seen and experiences, I still get the same thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb toward it.

I've always hated the danger part of climbing, and it's great to come down again because it's safe But there is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be taken from Auckland Grammar down to the Tangariro National Park for a skiing holiday.

I had never experienced anything like it before and I don't think I have experienced anything like it since [on Ruapehu]. It was my dreams coming true in a way, and from there on I tended to become more of a doer than a dreamer.

Boredom has always been a problem.

There are lots and lots of challenges that I wished - at the time - that I had done.There are lots of occasions where there were exciting things to be done but for some reason or another it was physically impossible for us to do them. I still wouldn't mind if I was able to go down into this most impressive valley in the Antarctic, but of course those things are beyond me now.

It's not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.

My most important projects have been the building and maintaining of schools and medical clinics for my dear friends in the Himalaya and helping restore their beautiful monasteries, too.

It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say 'good morning' and pass on by, he said. Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.

I was a dreamer when I was at high school and even primary school. I used to dream about doing adventurous things.

I have the challenges sort of already there and as a consequence my companions feel a considerable desire to do this, too, and they feel very put out if they are left in the cold, so there we have it. We have me who has lots of ideas and then we have a very good team who wish - who are persuaded almost - to take part in these challenges.

I'm sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you're afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.

Everest you won't change, but I will get better...I will conquer you.

I've always hated the danger part of climbing, and it's great to come down again because it's safe.

I have a number of heroes I still have warm feelings about. [Derek] Shackleton, for instance, was definitely, and still is, one of my great heroes.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

I still had the same affection for New Zealand as I've always had. Didn't change at all.

I was certainly seriously emotionally affected [ when Louise Hillary and Belinda Hillary died], but we were building the hospital at the time and I decided that the only thing to do was to carry on and complete the hospital - and it was a jolly good hospital too, I might say. So I really did it by working and working on the things that Louise and I had been working on.