Quotes from the best rock climbers and mountaineers in the world. Get inspired to get out there and get your hands on some rock. Climb on!
“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion.”
Anatoli Boukreev
“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
Ed Viesturs, No Short Cuts to the Top: Climbing the World’s 14 Highest Peaks
“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.”
Edward Whymper, Scrambles Amongst the Alps
“Because it’s there.”
George Mallory
“Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can’t fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.”
Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
“Turn your brain off and send.”
Chris Sharma
“I thought climbing the Devil’s Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.”
Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
“For a climber, saying that you are stopping by Everest is like saying that you are stopping by to see God.”
Roland Smith, Peak
“There are two kinds of climbers, those who climb because their heart sings when they’re in the mountains, and all the rest.”
Alex Lowe
“The best part of climbing is when it all clicks and gravity ceases to exist.”
Chris Sharma
“This obsession is a curious thing. Sometimes wonder about the merits of devoting so much of myself to a singular climbing objective. Much of the time it beats me down, leaves me hanging my head in despair. But then there are the moments that bring me to life. When excitement wells up inside my chest in a way that doesn’t happen in every day life. Today my fingertips were cracked and bleeding. I made no progress despite great conditions. Now I am on the ground and can hardly contain my excitement to get back on the wall. It’s a crazy rollercoaster and I owe my family and partners a great deal for encouraging me through it all.”
Tommy Caldwell
“Never did I explore life as intensively in its beautiness, as while hanging on two fingertips freely over the deep hollow.”
Wolfgang Güllich
“To be a climber one has to accept that gratification is rarely immediate.”
Bernadette McDonald
“You can be a climber and make full use of all the lessons climbing a piece of rock throws at you or you can blindly follow the motions and learn nothing.”
Hazel Findlay
“Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”
David McCullough Jr.
“Climbing here saved my life from the confines of materialistic illusion that we’re taught as children in school. The way I see it, there are two worlds: there’s the world where nothing is sacred except money, and the other world where everything is sacred.”
Ron Kauk
“I’m focused on executing what’s in front of me.”
Alex Honnold
“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.”
Greg Child
“One can’t take a breath large enough to last a lifetime; one can’t eat a meal big enough so that one never needs to eat again. Similarly, I don’t think any climb can make you content never to climb again.”
Woodrow Wilson Sayre
“It goes, boys!”
Lynn Hill (after the first free ascent of The Nose)
“I would say that the need to climb comes from that tough, lonely place of searching for your dignity. You know, that place – where we actually choose to confront our own weaknesses and fears, where we rebel against the terror of death – is really about dignity. That’s why alpinism is not just the act of ascending a mountain, but also inwardly of ascending above your self.”
Voytek Kurtyka
“In climbing you are always faced with new problems in which you must perform using intuitive movements, and then later analyze them to figure out why they work, and then learn from them.”
Wolfgang Gullich
Anytime you finish a climb, there’s always the next thing you can try.
Alex Honnold
“As I hammered in the last bolt and staggered over the rim, it was not at all clear to me who was the conqueror and who was the conquered. I do recall that El Cap seemed to be in much better condition than I was.”
Warren Harding
Climbing brings weaknesses front and center and it forces me to confront them and work through things that I wouldn’t otherwise go through in normal life. To me, that process is fun.
Emily Harrington
“Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean… Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
John Muir
“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
Jack Kerouac
“Success is not counted by how high you have climbed but by how many people you brought with you.”
Will Rose
“The best climber in the world is the one that has the most fun.”
Alex Lowe
“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in Church thinking about the mountains.”
John Muir
“There’s a constant tension in climbing, and really all exploration, between pushing yourself into the unknown but trying not to push too far. The best any of us can do is to tread that line carefully.”
Alex Honnold
“If you want to train for big mountain endeavours, spend time in big mountains.”
Jimmy Chin
“The summit is just a halfway point.”
Ed Viesturs
“There’s a certain joy in swinging around, propelling yourself upward… the fluidity of movement.”
Alex Honnold, ‘Free Solo’
“The summit is what drives us, but the climb itself is what matters”
Conrad Anker
“In the mountains there are only two grades: You can either do it, or you can’t.”
Rusty Baillie
“When preparing to climb a mountain – pack a light heart.”
Dan May
“…but that is the whole point: I have to push my limits to the max. Sitting tight, waiting it out and living in the past, has never been my thing. I want to be at the world’s highest point again, knowing it might slip out from underneath me at any moment. Because that is the only way to live”
Nimsdai Purja, Beyond Possible: One Man, Fourteen Peaks, and the Mountaineering Achievement of a Lifetime
