Gradually, very gradually, we saw the great mountain sides and glaciers and aretes, now one fragment and now another through the floating rifts, until far higher in the sky than imagination had dared to suggest the white summit of Everest appeared.

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

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

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.

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 greatest danger in life is not to take the adventure.

Why climb Mount Everest? Because it's there.