Edmund Hillary

I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur. ”

It's not a real adventure when you have to pay for it. ”

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. ”

There is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It's the intense effort, the giving of everything you've got. It's really a very pleasant sensation. ”

I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics. ”

I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally - but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers. ”

My most important projects have been the building and maintaining of schools and medical clinics for my dear friends in the Himalaya and helping restore their beautiful monasteries, too. ”

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. ”

I don't regard myself as a cracking good climber. I'm just strong in the back. I have a lot of enthusiasm, and I'm good on ice. ”

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. ”