I guess I don't try to justify climbing or defend it, because I can't. I see climbing as a compulsion that, at its best, is no worse than many other compulsions - golf or stamp collecting or growing world-record pumpkins.

Military investigations are designed not to find anyone guilty. And you can't investigate up the chain of command, which is a huge impediment.

Military investigations are designed not to find anyone guilty.

Why climb? That's a question that baffles me. It perplexes me. I really asked that a lot on Everest. I can't justify it. I can't say it's for a good cause. All I can say is look at the history of exploration: it's full of vainglorious pursuits.

Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.

When you are committed to living a life in service to the most high, the choices to be great, to serve and be served, to love and be loved are apparent.

I've learned that men and women who are living wholehearted lives really allow themselves to soften into joy and happiness. They allow themselves to experience it.

Ideologies are ways of organizing large swaths of life and experience under a set of shared but unexamined assumptions. This quality makes an ideology particularly hard to see, at least while it's exerting its hold on your culture. A reigning ideology is a little like the weather: all pervasive and virtually inescapable.