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.

Foreword to Peak Performance : Business Lessons from the World's Top Sports Organizations (2000) by Clive Gibson, Mike Pratt, Kevin Roberts and Ed Weymes., 2000

Having just paid our respects to the highest mountain in the world, I then had no choice but to urinate on it.

View from the Summit Simon and Schuster (2000) pp 15-16 [orig pub 1999]. Also (slightly misquoted) in Thinker, Failure, Soldier, Jailer Aurum Press (2012) p 22 ed. Harry de Quetteville., 2000

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.

As quoted in Great Climbs: A Celebration of World Mountaineering (1994) by Sir Chris Bonington, 1994

It was too late to take risks now. I asked Tenzing to belay me strongly, and I started cutting a cautious line of steps up the ridge. Peering from side to side and thrusting with my ice axe, I tried to discover a possible cornice, but everything seemed solid and firm. I waved Tenzing up to me. A few more whacks of the ice–ax, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest. It was 11:30 AM. My first sensation was one of relief — relief that the long grind was over, that the summit had been reached before our oxygen supplies had dropped to a critical level; and relief that in the end the mountain had been kind to us in having a pleasantly rounded cone for its summit instead of a fearsome and unapproachable cornice. But mixed with the relief was a vague sense of astonishment that I should have been the lucky one to attain the ambition of so many brave and determined climbers. I seemed difficult to grasp that we'd got there. I was too tired and too conscious of the long way down to safety really to feel any great elation. But as the fact of our success thrust itself more clearly into my mind, I felt a quiet glow of satisfaction spread through my body — a satisfaction less vociferous but more powerful than I had ever felt on a mountain top before. I turned and looked at Tenzing. Even beneath his oxygen mask and the icicles hanging form his hair, I could see his infectious grin of sheer delight. I held out my hand, and in silence we shook in good Anglo-Saxon fashion. But this was not enough for Tenzing, and impulsively he threw his arm around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back in mutual congratulations.

"Adventure's End" in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) edited by George Plimpton, p. 85, 1992

Tenzing had been waiting patiently, but now, at my request, he unfurled the flags wrapped around his ice–axe and standing at the summit, held them above his head. Clad in all his bulky equipment and with the flags flapping furiously in the wind, he made a dramatic picture, and the thought drifted through my mind that this photograph should be a good one if it came out at all. 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.

On the photograph of Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay at the summit of Everest, in "Adventure's End" in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) edited by George Plimpton, p. 86, 1992

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.

Statement of 1977 as quoted in "Sir Edmund Hillary, a Pioneering Conquerer of Everest, Dies at 88" in The New York Times (online edition) (10 January 2008), 1977

Well, we knocked the bastard off!

Hillary's comment to George Lowe, after his successful ascent of Mt Everest, as he and Tenzing Norgay were descending from the summit. (29 May 1953); as recounted in Nothing Venture, Nothing Win (1975) Ch. 10; also recounted as "Well George, we’ve knocked the bastard off." as quoted by Jan Morris in "Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay" for Time magazine (14 June 1999), 1975

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

On Neil Armstrong’s famous first words on stepping on the surface of the moon, "That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." The Sunday Times [London] (21 July 1974), 1974

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

Comment (28 December 1957) eight days before he reached the South Pole as part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, as quoted in news summaries (5 January 1958), 1957

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.

High Adventure : The True Story of the First Ascent of Everest (1955), 1955

Some day I’m going to climb Everest.

Statement to a friend just before World War II.

I was very much aware that we still had to get safely back down the mountain again and that was quite an important factor. I really felt the most excitement when we finally got to the bottom of the mountain again and it was all behind us.

We didn’t know if it was humanly possible to reach the top of Mt. Everest. And even using oxygen as we were, if we did get to the top, we weren’t at all sure whether we wouldn’t drop dead or something of that nature.

The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find.

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.