Enslavement to your own weakness - be it an addiction to alcohol, or to a woman or to fame - it's degrading, and it means losing your dignity and your freedom.

Naturally, the top does not automatically make us better. Like the samurai frequented ordinary cutthroat, so sometimes extreme mountaineer can be self-centered, mythomaniac or crook to each yourself and the environment.

The man coming back from the hard mountain trip is a wiser being, calmer and radiating inside. I'd say momentary liberated.

Every type of evil we've got in us is the result of that one true illness of the human mind - that is, of being self-centered.

Difficult struggle in mountaineering is our rise above himself, is the voice of freedom.

Great effort, fear and suffering sweet all the worthless chaff out of us.

Stupidity is falling pray to your own illusions.