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.

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.

The highest of the world's mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy.

- Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest, Sir? - Because it is there.

For the stone from the top for geologists, the knowledge of the limits of endurance for the doctors, but above all for the spirit of adventure to keep alive the soul of man.

Half the charm of climbing mountains is born in visions preceding this experience - visions of what is mysterious, remote, inaccessible.