“...seen from above, landscapes are made up of mountains and watercourses. Just as a transparent model of the human body consists of a framework of bone and a network of arteries, the earth's crust is structured in mountain ridges, river, creeks, and gullies.”

“Not only during the ascent, but also during the descent my willpower is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goalseems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attentionhas diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is nowgreater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing - and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is like deaththrough freezing - a pleasant one.”

“The wonderful things in life are the things you do, not the things you have.”

“Warum steigen Sie auf Berge Herr Messner?""Weil sie da sind”

“It is my strong conviction that a realist conception of human nature should be made a servant of an ethic of progressive justice and should not be made into a bastion of conservatism, particularly a conservatism which defends unjust privileges.”

“The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.”

“True inspiration unfolds itself, not by force or it becomes fake. True intuition is also the ability to be observant.”