My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.
When you’re climbing at high altitudes, life can get pretty miserable.
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.
When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.
The Sherpas play a very important role in most mountaineering expeditions, and in fact many of them lead along the ridges and up to the summit.
Some day I’m going to climb Everest.
I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don’t give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn’t impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die.
When I was 50 years old, I actually decided to draw up a list of half a dozen things that I really hadn’t done very well, and I was going to make efforts to improve. One of them was skiing, and I really did become a very much better skier.
I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.
Becoming a ‘Sir’ is slightly uncomfortable at first, although it is a considerable honor. It is amazing how quickly you become accustomed to it.
Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims.
I’m sure the feeling of fear, as long as you can take advantage of it and not be rendered useless by it, can make you extend yourself beyond what you would regard as your capacity. If you’re afraid, the blood seems to flow freely through the veins, and you really do feel a sense of stimulation.
Once I’ve decided to do something, I do usually try to carry it through to fruition.
I hate being called an ‘icon.’ I just don’t like it. That’s all there is to it.
I don’t know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I personally do not think I’m a great gift to the world. I’ve been very fortunate.
Many people have been getting too casual about climbing Everest. I forecast a disaster many times.
I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you’ve got people just streaming up the mountain – well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.
Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.
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.
I think that a good mountaineer is usually a sensible mountaineer.
There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a yeti.