Top 55 Climber Quotes

The best climber in the world is the one that has the most fun.

I don’t regard myself as a cracking good climber. I’m just strong in the back. I have a lot of enthusiasm, and I’m good on ice.

I knew that there would be climbers around me who would reach the summit faster. I was warned not to be hasty.

I don’t bench press, but I use machines to work 10-12 muscle groups. Biceps, triceps, a few things for the back, calves, shoulders and so on – and then I’ll go on the running machine, cross-trainer or mountain climber.

The Slovenians are the very best climbers in the world.

As a Nepali, I hope my climbs put a spotlight on the talented climbers here.

I love to read about the exploits of technical mountain climbers, but I’ve never done any vertical climbing.

You can either be a quitter, a camper or a climber. I don’t want to quit, and I certainly don’t want to camp.

My brother Bill, who is a year older, is a climber, and when I was in the seventh grade, he taught me how to rappel off the frozen waterfall in our backyard.

I’m not a great technical climber, but over the years it has given me the opportunity to see wonderful corners of Britain that I wouldn’t have been able to experience any other way.

There is something addictive in space that makes you want to go back – like the mountain climbers who want to go back to the Himalayas although their fingers were cut by frostbite.

James Salter has been a fighter pilot, a rogue, and a climber. He counts Robert Redford as a friend.

I don’t know a lot about mountaineering. I once went walking in the Lake District with the legendary climber Chris Bonington and had to have emergency physio afterwards to regain sensation in my thighs.

My mother and father met through climbing and it was totally natural that I would become a climber too.

I wrote a great deal of a novel, ‘Winter’s Tale,’ on the roof of a Brooklyn Heights tenement on Henry Street. I was a technical climber, and now and then I would put down my manuscript and get up to walk along parapets and climb walls and chimneys.

I’ve never really had a TV career. I’ve been a soldier and a climber.

I don’t mind being called snobbish, a pain and a social climber, but being called unkind really hurts.

I think part of my business problems stemmed from a feeling that I had to be more than a good climber, that I had to do something more ‘meaningful.’ And that may come from my father.

I became famous for the fact that I would break many, many limits. People said, ‘He does all these crazy things.’ But oddly it was a crazy thing only because scientists and climbers said, ‘Everest and the 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen – impossible. Messner is becoming sick in his head.’

I said to Scott that the ascent seemed to be going slowly and that I was concerned descending climbers could possibly run out of oxygen before their return to camp IV.

For years I was a rock climber and nothing else. I went to school, yes, and university, yes, but in my heart I was a rock climber.

As a child I was the best tree climber in our neighbourhood, I was like a little monkey. I’ve never been afraid of hurting myself or a little physical discomfort.

I think speed climbing is kind of an artificial discipline. Climbers compete on the same holds and train on the same holds, which doesn’t have much in common with the climbing philosophy in my opinion.

A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.

I’m a rock climber, a high-altitude climber, an adventurer, a storyteller through my museums, and a writer of more than 50 books.

Hunters get lost all the time. There’s just an outcry against climbers because a lot of people don’t understand climbers and they think they’re crazy.

Look, I do not control alpinism. But maybe I was too successful. Many in the mountaineering scene – journalists, second-rate climbers, lecturers, so-called historians – had a problem with me for many years.

There are two kinds of climbers: those who climb because their heart sings when they’re in the mountains, and all the rest.

I am not so famous. I’m known in a few countries like Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland and around the Alps. Some climbers in Beijing know my name, and some in America, but I am not really famous. It’s very relative, my fame.

I’ve become more of a climber now – who still keeps that time trial as strong as ever. It gives me such self-belief. I feel a different athlete.

I consider myself a rock climber but the definition of rock climbing as has changed.

The top climbers in the world had attempted this climb and couldn’t do it. That history is what makes Meru special.

Rubina hasn’t fully explored her adventurous side yet. The main reason I fell in love with her was because she is super healthy and fit. She proved that she is a good climber when I took her along to climb Mt. Kalsubai.

I think Himalayan climbers tend to mature fairly late. I think most of the successful Himalayan climbers have ranged from 28 to just over 40, really.

Many climbers use the term ‘objective hazard; to denote something they aren’t to be held accountable for. I held myself accountable for the mistakes I made over the years.

Free soloing is almost as old as climbing itself, with roots in the 19th century. Climbers are continuing to push the boundaries. There are certainly better technical climbers than me. But if I have a particular gift, it’s a mental one – the ability to keep it together where others might freak out.

I know I’m not a cutting-edge free climber. Free soloing, I’m comfortable to 5.10-plus or 5.11a. But if I was a grade higher I could do some amazing things.

Beverley Leslie was closeted. I’m not closeted. He was a little homophobic. He’s a social climber. I’m nothing like that. He had a mean streak. I don’t think I’m mean at all.

I think our storytellers – our songwriters should be great storytellers, and they should be mountain climbers and explorers, because music is something that can cross all different borders.

The mission of professional mountain climbers is almost impossibly difficult by design: Their very livelihood is based on achieving the unprecedented. Their expeditions are complicated, exhausting, often life-threatening. Risk is the fuel that keeps them going.

The art of climbing is the art of survival. The best climber is the man or woman going in the most crazy places but surviving.

There’s a lot of mountain climbers trapped inside of bodies of people behind the counter at Kinko’s.

In ‘The Prophet,’ Kahlil Gibran says something about perfection only being reached by stripping something to the point of nakedness. That’s the ultimate project: the naked climber doing the greatest climb.

Even though Czech food is traditionally a bit heavy, especially for a climber, I can’t resist some dishes: sveckova, for example, is beef in a creamy sauce with celery and dumplings. It’s probably fortunate that I don’t know how to cook it myself.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I’ve been called a great adventurer.

As a professional climber, that’s the question you always get: Why, why, why? It’s an ineffable thing; you can’t describe it.

As a professional climber and photographer, I am asked to shoot in a lot of situations with a lot of different people. Sometimes I’m with the hardest, most seasoned alpinists in the world. Sometimes I’m hanging out with celebrities doing a benefit climb.

You have to be careful of social climbers. There are a lot of potholes out there.

Los Angeles is a very magical place when you take the entertainment industry out of it. You have beautiful beaches and amazing mountains here. I’m a big rock climber. I head out into the mountains whenever I have free time. It’s amazing.

I explained I wanted to descend as quickly as possible to camp IV in order to warm myself and gather a supply of hot drink and oxygen in the event I might need to go back up the mountain to assist descending climbers.

Albert Frederick Mummery and Chris Bonington are the British climbers I most admire.

When I was young, I was on a real hot streak with ‘Crazy Climber.’ There was a good three-week span where I couldn’t get that game out of my head. I could not get back to the arcade fast enough to try and climb up there and not get kicked by a potted plant this time. That one got under my skin.

I see myself as a climber and an activist.

I also know for a fact of at least two other ascents of the Delicate Arch. But when ‘Outside’ did their research, the other two climbers wouldn’t admit to it, and I admit to it because I don’t see anything wrong with a man climbing a rock.

A lot of people love to throw the social climber thing at people who are on the rise, but it’s really just God moving all the people that are distractions, all the obstacles, out of the way for me to achieve what I’m destined to achieve.