Quotes from Reinhold Messner

The Slovenians are the very best climbers in the world.

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.

Climbing is not a competition, and you cannot talk in terms of 'greatest,' it means nothing.

The art of climbing is to go where you go knowing that you could die, but you don't die. That is adventure.

In politics, you have to compromise from morning to evening. Democracy is the art of compromise.

Around half of the top alpinists have died climbing. Of course if I'm careful and turn back more often than the others, I can increase my chances of survival. But if I hadn't been lucky a few times, I wouldn't be here.

I am responsible for my brother's death. I feel the guilt of having survived. People say, 'You should be happy. You survived.' But I have this feeling that it is not right that I am alive.

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.

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.

The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.

Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like death through freezing - a pleasant one.

seen from above, landscapes are made up of mountains and watercourses. Just as a transparent model of the human body consists of a framework of bone and a network of arteries, the earth's crust is structured in mountain ridges, river, creeks, and gullies.

I came to realize that my path to knowledge would not lead me to libraries, professors, universities, and studies. My path to knowledge was through living life and experiencing reality. I could learn plenty secondhand, but nothing was ever to surpass the experiences I had in the wilderness. All my knowledge of social, scentific, and religious issues has been acquired through personal experience.

I'm primarily concerned with what happens inside a person when they encounter the mountains. When you climb a mountain, you come back down as a different person. We don't change the mountain by climbing it; we ourselves change.

By going to places where I do not belong, I experience the art of living - orientation through disorientation. All the deserts of the world lie within us, after all.

For it depended entirely on me as to whether the myth of the mountain was to be transformed and the path found between the supernatural and reality. It was in me that all expectations were vested.

Più in alto salivo, più in alto andavo, più mi era chiaro che il mondo sarebbe andato avanti a esistere anche senza di me, e che tutti gli dei sarebbero scomparsi con l'umanità. Perché sono proprio gli uomini che creano gli dei.

After every few steps, we huddle over our ice axes mouths agape, struggling for sufficient breath to keep our muscles going.... at a height of 8800 metres, we can no longer keep on our feet while we rest. We crumple to our knees, clutching our axes.... Every ten or fifteen steps we collapse into the snow to rest, then crawl on again.

H. ¿Es importante para usted la amistad? M. Sí, mucho. H. ¿Cuántos amigos tiene? M. Pocos, y estoy orgulloso de que sean pocos.

What gives me strength is the feeling of being independent. In effect, I'm really just a dilettante. I've lived, explored, and worked - but only in nonjobs. I've often achieved success against all the predictions. And I've done it by following a very simple pattern of behavior: stick at it and do everything in my power to make it happen.

When I am identifying an objective, the summit is everything. I wouldn't make it up otherwise. I'm not a superman; I'm just mentally capable of concentrating on the end point. Once this has been achieved, I need a new task, a new idea, a new project. I've been lucky so far - I've always been able to get myself motivated for the next new thing. The challenges I set myself are age-related.

I would rather be ostracized than assimilated! I read recently that my greatest accomplishment was my unerring ability to make myself unpopular.

Mit dem Selbstvertrauen ist es wie mit dem Quellwasser. Es versiegt nur selten. Wer sie findet, diese Quelle im eigenen Ich, kann sie ein Leben lang nutzen. Alles Suchen, alle Umwege sind nichts als Verirrungen im Labyrinth der Möglichkeiten. Rückschläge und der erlittene Neuanfang speisen das Vertrauen in uns selbst. Denn nicht der Durst, Leiden schafft Leidenschaft.

Nur so aber hatte die Menschheit – den verschiedensten Umweltbedingungen ausgesetzt – eine Chance, sich zu entfalten und trotz Katastrophen zu überleben.