Edmund Hillary quotes

Edmund Hillary was a New Zealand mountaineer and philanthropist, best known as one of the first two climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. His achievement marked a historic milestone in the field of exploration and inspired countless adventurers around the world. He dedicated much of his later life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal through charitable projects. Here are 60 of his quotes:

People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.

Edmund Hillary

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

Edmund Hillary

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.

Edmund Hillary

While standing on top of Everest, I looked across the valley, towards the other great peak, Makalu, and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed... it showed me that, even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything for me, by any means. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

Edmund Hillary

I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.

Edmund Hillary

I've always hated the danger part of climbing, and it's great to come down again because it's safe But there is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It's the intense effort, the giving of everything you've got. It's really a very pleasant sensation.

Edmund Hillary

Some day I'm going to climb Everest.

Edmund Hillary

I don't know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt, either, that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics. That has given me more satisfaction than a footprint on a mountain.

Edmund Hillary

I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.

Edmund Hillary

I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur.

Edmund Hillary

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

Edmund Hillary

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

Edmund Hillary

In some ways I believe I epitomise the average New Zealander: I have modest abilities, I combine these with a good deal of determination, and I rather like to succeed.

Edmund Hillary

I became a Hindu. I was very close to the Hindu ethic. It was a great spiritual experience. ... I believe a man can make his own destiny through his work and effort.

Edmund Hillary

My solar plexus was tight with fear as I ploughed on. Halfway up I stopped, exhausted. I could look down 10,000 feet between my legs, and I have never felt more insecure. Anxiously I waved Tenzing up to me.

Edmund Hillary

Reaching the summit of a mountain gives great satisfaction, but nothing for me has been more rewarding in life than the result of our climb on Everest, when we have devoted ourselves to the welfare of our Sherpa friends.

Edmund Hillary

I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities who was willing to work quite hard and had the necessary imagination and determination. I was just an average bloke; it was the media that transformed me into a heroic figure. And try as I did, there was no way to destroy my heroic image. But as I learned through the years, as long as you didn't believe all that rubbish about yourself, you wouldn't come to much harm.

Edmund Hillary

Better if he had said something natural like, "Jesus, here we are."

Edmund Hillary

Well, we knocked the bastard off!

Edmund Hillary

I am hell-bent for the South Pole - God willing and crevasses permitting.

Edmund Hillary

You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things - to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus.

Edmund Hillary

I didn't worry about getting Tenzing to take a photograph of me - as far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how.

Edmund Hillary