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

The greatest danger in life is not to take the adventure.

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.

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.

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.

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.