I don't like egocentricity, which is something that I have arduously battled in myself my entire life.

I like to describe Himalayan climbing as a kind of art of suffering. Just pushing, pushing yourself to your limits.

The most significant dimension of freedom is the freedom from one's own ego - in other words, from the feeling that I am the center of everything

Classic mountaineering grows out of a traditional romantic imagination. Its heart is the feeling, its path is blood, sweat and tears, and its restriction is God.

Stupidity is falling pray to your own illusions.

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.

The mountains are exceptional places for, as the natural environment is concerned, they are the concentration of the wildest possible variety of all natural phenomena and forms. They are somehow a concentration of the truth of nature or even I'd say its essence.