Reinhold Messner
For me, imagination is more important in climbing than muscle or daredevil antics.Collection: Imagination
The best climbers no longer go to the 8000ers, but to the most difficult mountains in the world which are 6000 or 7000-meter-peaks. There they find any kind of playground. But it is a pity that the really good climbers have fewer opportunities to finance their expeditions because so much attention is taken away by the Everest tourists.Collection: Finance
By climbing mountains we were not learning how big we were. We were finding out how breakable, how weak and how full of fear we are.Collection: Fear
Climbing is all about freedom, the freedom to go beyond all the rules and take a chance, to experience something new, to gain insight into human nature.Collection: Freedom
I am my own home, and my handkerchief is my flag.Collection: Home
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.'Collection: Famous
Each mountain in the Dolomites is like a piece of art.Collection: Art
I was always at my best when I was learning, when I was curious. When I had yet to see past the next horizon.Collection: Learning
Once you lose your credibility, you can never restore it.
Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are dangerous.
A tourist follows a trail; a mountaineer finds one.
I have been in the most dangerous of places just in order to survive. An intelligent man would stay in a safe place to survive.
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.
The mountains are dangerous. Only an unintelligent person will say they are not dangerous.
I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.
I would never bring a flag on the summit. If somebody is climbing for a country he is not normal, he is sick.
People don't like reality, they like crazy stories.
All the Yeti footprints are all the same bear. The Yeti isn't a fantastic figure. The Yeti is reality.
In politics, you have to compromise from morning to evening. Democracy is the art of compromise.
I have a very different fear if I'm all alone in the summit area of Mount Everest and if I know that there is nothing below me, no Sherpa, no tent, no rope.
When I lost seven of my toes on Nanga Parbat and small parts of my fingertips I knew I'd never be a great rock climber. So I specialized in high-altitude climbing.
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.
The true alpinist doesn't want any infrastructure, he wants to go into the wild. And the odds of getting killed there are relatively high. And most people are sensible enough not to want that.
The art of climbing is to go where you go knowing that you could die, but you don't die. That is adventure.
Traditional alpinism is to go where the others are not going and to be self-reliant.
Climbing is more of an art than a sport. It's the aesthetics of a mountain that compels me. The line of a route, the style of ascent. It is creative.
There are three elements of mountaineering - difficulty, danger, and exposure. Difficulty is the technical aspect of it. Danger, it is best to avoid, but some people like to increase danger to a point where their success is dependent only on luck. And exposure, which is what truly defines Alpinism, is what you face in wild nature.
For me, climbing has always been about adventure and that involves difficulties, danger and exposure, so I deliberately set out to climb with as little equipment as possible.
For me the Everest solo was the icing on the cake of my climbs: the highest mountain in the world, during a monsoon, and as far as possible even on a new route, of course without oxygen.
Adventure has to do with private, personal experiences. But, the possibilities, there are millions of unclimbed mountains - I have seen in the Eastern part of Tibet, mountains 6,000-6,500 meters high, vertical walls twice as tall as the Eiger... but nobody is going there, because they aren't 8,000-meter peaks.
In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
I like Nietzsche. I quote him in many of my books. He was born 100 years before me.
Ninety per cent of the tourists climbing big mountains are on 10 mountains - and one million mountains in the world are empty.
I was first to understand it was boring to go with heavy shoes to base camp. When we first tried Dhaulagiri, a very difficult approach at high altitude, we needed very heavy boots. So it was usual to wear such heavy boots to approach all base camps. But I thought this was crazy. We needed lighter shoes for many of the approaches.
Crossing the Gobi was a real milestone for me.
Life is about daring to carry out your ideas. And for me, it always comes back to the wilderness, nature, mountains.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
Mountaineering is over. Alpinism is dead. Maybe its spirit is still alive a little in Britain and America, but it will soon die out.
All nationalism is dangerous; all religions are dangerous.
I can't tell people to love mountains. They have to find their own way.
I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.
The museum at Ortles is dedicated to the world of ice so we wanted visitors to feel like they were inside a glacier.
Every week someone rings me up wanting to open a new Messner museum, but I'm not interested.
To me, it's just not that important whether someone climbs the Eigerwand in ten hours or in three.
Anyone who ever witnessed Ueli Steck flying up the Eigerwand would know that he was always in control of his actions. He was always moving with immense precision and a sense of safety.
Ueli Steck, I'm absolutely certain, had a very strong inner drive to keep pushing. He set very high standards for himself.
I have always said that a mountain without danger is not a mountain.
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.
My father blamed me for my brother Gunther's death, for not bringing him home. He died in an avalanche as we descended from the summit of Nanga Parbat, one of the 14 peaks over 8,000m, in 1970. Gunther and I did so much together. It was difficult for my father to understand what it was like up there.
Climbing is not a competition, and you cannot talk in terms of 'greatest,' it means nothing.