KEY POINTS:
HILLARY ON ...
CONQUERING EVEREST
"We knocked the bastard off."
"Thought you must have," replied George Lowe, a fellow New Zealand mountaineer who greeted him on the way down.
WHY TENZING DIDN'T TAKE HIS PICTURE AT THE SUMMIT:
"As far as I knew, he had never taken
a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how."
MOUNTAINEERING
"It's not the mountain we conquer but ourselves."
Reader's Digest
MOUNTAINS
"It is an act of worship just to sit and look at high mountains."
Reader's Digest, December 1976
COURAGE
"Modern developments in machinery and equipment have produced major changes in the technique of exploration. Aircraft and vehicles are in many cases replacing the human legs; oxygen bottles are giving new strength to air-starved lungs in the thin air that clothes the giants of the Himalayas; and radio communication has removed the loneliness from the most desolate land. But despite all this I firmly believe that in the end it is the man himself that counts. When the going gets tough and things go wrong the same qualities are needed to win through as they were in the past - qualities of courage, resourcefulness, the ability to put up with discomfort and hardship, and the enthusiasm to hold tight to an ideal and to see it through with doggedness and determination."
Challenge of the Unknown, 1958
EXPLORERS
"The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit still lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, and not for what he may find."
Challenge of the Unknown,1958
THE SOUTH POLE
"I am hell-bent for the South Pole, God willing and crevasses permitting."
Challenge of the Unknown, 1958 news report, January 5, 1958
MOTIVATION
"You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things, to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals."
The Ultimate Success Quotations Library 1997
LEADERSHIP
"You don't have to be intellectually bright to be a competent leader."
A Dictionary of Contemporary Quotations, London, 1982
CHARITY
"If you have plenty - more than enough - and someone else has nothing, then you should do something about it."
BEING KNIGHTED
"I had never approved of titles and couldn't imagine myself possessing one. I had a vivid picture of walking down the main street of Papakura dressed in my torn and dirty overalls and thought I'd have to get a new pair."
Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, 1975
THE YETI
"There is precious little in civilisation to appeal to the Yeti."
Observer, June 3, 1960
THAT MOUNTAIN
"Mt Everest is now littered with junk from bottom to top."
Observer, 1982
THE MEDIA
"I was just an average bloke; it was the media that transformed me into a heroic figure. And try as I did, there was no way to destroy my heroic image. But as I learned through the years, as long as you didn't believe all that rubbish about yourself, you wouldn't come to much harm."
November 5, 1998 at a dinner of the American Himalayan Foundation in San Francisco
MALLORY
"I've always regarded Mallory as a pretty heroic figure and I think in many ways it would be quite appropriate if it would prove he was successful. Of course he didn't get down again, so he didn't quite complete the job fully."
May 3, 1999 after the discovery of George Leigh Mallory's body
HIS GRANDFATHER
"He bought a few racehorses and over the next few years successfully disposed of his fortune on the racetrack [so that] by his middle sixties he was almost destitute."
Nothing Venture, Nothing Win
HIS MOTHER
"A woman of admirable character [who] gave me the affection and encouragement I needed."
Nothing Venture, Nothing Win
HIMSELF
"In some ways I believe I epitomise the average New Zealander: I have modest abilities, I combine these with a good deal of determination, and I rather like to succeed."
Hillary on the Edge website
CHILDREN
"Because my name appears in history books, most children think I am dead."
Heinemann Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations, 1988
POSTERITY
"I don't know if I particularly want to be remember for anything. I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's not doubt, either, that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics."
Forbes Global, October 2000
... ON HILLARY
"Ed wasn't made for the technical stuff but for long, high things. In 1953 he probably had no peer at climbing at high altitude. He was exceptionally strong. Remember that on the day before he summitted Everest he carried about 30kg to the South Col at over 8000m. I doubt that there was anyone else in the world who could have done that and then gone to the top."
Graham Dingle, mountaineer
"It was a measure of the men [Hillary and Tenzing] that over the years they truly grew into the [heroic] condition. Perhaps they thought that just being the first to climb a hill was hardly as qualification for immortality; perhaps they instinctively realised destiny had another place for them. For they became, in the course of time, representatives not merely of their particular nations, but of half of humanity. Astronauts might justly claim that they were envoys of all humanity; Hillary and Tenzing, in a less spectacular kind, came to stand for the small nations of the world, the young ones, the tucked away and the up-and-coming."
Jan Morris in Time: 100 People of the Century
"The last thousand feet of Everest are not for mere flesh and blood. Whoever reaches the summit will have to rise godlike above his own frailties and his tremendous environment."
Frank Smyth, member of the 1933, '36 and '38 expeditions, foreshadowing the qualities of the man who was to succeed.
"It's nivver been nowt sin' they gate to top Everest. They must've bust summat."
An old lady in Yorkshire blaming Hillary and Tenzing for two years of bad weather following the Everest conquest.
"Ed pointed the way for the rest of us. "
David Breashears, director and cinematographer of the Imax film Everest.
