Tommy Caldwell Quotes

Climbing, for me, is all about solving the magnitude of the problem. The best projects are the ones with big question marks hanging over them.

It's like a living process. You start out, and you see the Eiger north face, and you think, 'That's impossible.' Then you start to dream. Then you climb the Eiger north face. Then maybe you go to the Himalaya.

I came to Flatanger with a plan in my mind to bolt a really, really hard thing that would be beautiful and keep me motivated to try it for a long time, in some underdeveloped area.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

Mountaineering is one of the most difficult sports - we are away from routine life for days, living in tents, and it requires high degree of physical and mental strength.

The way to Everest is not a Yellow Brick Road.

The mission of professional mountain climbers is almost impossibly difficult by design: Their very livelihood is based on achieving the unprecedented. Their expeditions are complicated, exhausting, often life-threatening. Risk is the fuel that keeps them going.

Because of athletics, I got real comfortable with risk at a young age.

When I took on Everest, I'm not there for the views.

Today, to find a challenge is really hard. In the Alps, everything is done. The new lines, almost all of them are finished. So to find a new challenge, it's all beginning to go to speed.

In the West, the art of rock climbing is growing because it has to do with less risk, good muscles. But the people seeking high goals in high places are in Eastern Europe, and they reach their goals because they are willing to suffer more.

Because it is there [famous explanation for wanting to climb Mount Everest].

Climbing is unadulterated hard labor. The only real pleasure is the satisfaction of going where no man has been before and where few can follow.

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life.

I say we are climbing out of a ditch and we are climbing up.

There's something about being afraid, about being small, about enforced humility that draws me to climbing.

Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere. Climb the mountain just a little bit to test it's a mountain. From the top of the mountain, you cannot see the mountain.

My Antarctic expedition is just about doable, just feasible and that's what is exciting to me. If I knew it was possible, if I knew I could do it without too much bother, I wouldn't be interested.

I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.

The first question which you will ask and which I must try to answer is this; What is the use of climbing Mount Everest? and my answer must at once be, it is no use. There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever.

I enjoyed climbing with other people, good friends, but I did quite a lot of solo climbing, too.

I was scared many times on Everest, but this is all part of the challenge. When I fell down a crevasse, it was pretty scary.

You can get a lawyer with two months off or a New York socialite who wants to play at being Lewis and Clark and put them up there, but Everest is still in charge; it can still kick butt.

Anytime you finish a climb, there's always the next thing you can try.

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls ride over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things.