Jimmy Chin Quotes

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.

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.

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.

I climbed nine mountains because I love adventure, and I got addicted to that feeling and I never wanted to stop. I wanted to see what I could accomplish. I finally can say that I stood on top of the world.

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.

Not to be too grandiose about it, but in a way I see myself like Sir Edmund Hillary. The water was my Everest.

I have the tools to climb the mountain so I don't mind climbing mountains. I have climbed mountains since I was growing up in east London in Plaistow. I'm not scared of climbing mountains. When you get to the top, the view's great. That's what it's all about.

I'm done with Everest. I did it three times, and I need to be good at that and be happy with it and focus on other climbs.

Climbing the mountain is always more fun than sitting at the top. It's just you have to find different mountains to climb.

Of course I climbed Everest without oxygen, but it's not the end of the story for me. The summit itself is not what counts. It's how'd you get there, what'd you climb, and there are really great opportunities to climb on this mountain. It's a beautiful place.

There's no glory in climbing a mountain if all you want to do is to get to the top. It's experiencing the climb itself - in all its moments of revelation, heartbreak, and fatigue - that has to be the goal.

There is no joy involved in climbing mountains, there is simply the challenge, the self-invented challenge, the play.

- Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest, Sir? - Because it is there.

Some day I'm going to climb Everest.

Because it's there. (when asked why he wanted to climb Everest)

But I think there's something wonderful and extraordinary about climbing on your own and just that kind of relationship to the environment. I'm very addicted to the mountains. You know, so, I do like that solitude.

If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won't see why we go.

Mountain climbing is my passion, and to empower women through my expeditions is the reason.

I think I'm the first man to sit on top of the world.

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.

I climbed Mount Everest. I don't quit.

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.

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.

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.

Stand at the base and look up at 3,000 feet of blankness. It just looks like there's no way you can climb it. That's what you seek as a climber. You want to find something that looks absurd and figure out how to do it.