To struggle and to understand. Never the last without the first. That is the law.

So, if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.

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.

What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money.

We don't live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means, and that is what life is for.

Just to lie here in the sun with great white peaks all around me and the biggest glacier in Europe at my feet, to eat from time to time, to sleep a little and dream a great deal- it is a heavenly existence.

My mind is in a state of constant rebellion. I believe that will always be so.