"It is not the size of the Mountain,

It is the size of the Dream."

• Dare to Reach TALK
• Acknowledgements

"Strong motivation is the most important factor in getting you to the top" -- Edmund Hillary

"All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds, awake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerouus men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it reality." T.E. Lawrence

"Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life." Sogyal Rinpoche

"The wind is the appalling enemy. It is mind- destroying, physically- destroying, soul- destroying..." Chris Bonnington

"Everest for me, and I believe for the world, is the physical and symbolic manifestation of overcoming odds to achieve a dream" —- Tom Whittaker

"I was in continual agony; I have never in my life been so tired as on the summit of Everest that day. I just sat and sat there, oblivious to everything".  Reinhold Messner.

"Life is brought down to the basics: if you are warm, regular, healthy, not thirsty or hungry, then you are not on a mountain. . . . Climbing at altitude is like hitting your head against a brick wall - it's great when you stop." Chris Darwin

“The smaller one comes to feel compared to the mountain, the nearer one comes to sharing in its greatness. I do not know why this is so” Arne Naess.

"Oh, the absolute lethargy of 24,600'. You want to pee, and you lie there for a quarter of an hour making up your mind to look for the pee bottle." Chris Bonnington, 1975

"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. Oh, we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body at high altitudes, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of aviation. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron. We shall not find a single foot of earth that can be planted with crops to raise food. It's no use. So, 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. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for." George Leigh Mallory, 1922

"Because it is there." George Mallory (1886-1924), answer to the question 'Why do you want to climb Mt. Everest ?'.

"I have climbed my mountain ,but I must still live my life" Tenzing Norgay

"I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits." Reinhold Messner

"Mountains are not fair or unfair, they are just dangerous." Reinhold Messner

"You've climbed the highest mountain in the world. What's left ? It's all downhill from there. You've got to set your sights on something higher than Everest." Willi Unsoeld

"People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top." Margaret Thatcher

"Everest demands your psychological tenacity. You must be stubborn; you must hold fast; you must know why you are there. You must see what you don’t want to see, but be able to remove it from mind’s eye. You must focus on one thing or you will die. Your world is exactly one step at a time." Theodore Fairhurst

"The mountains will always be there, the trick is to make sure you are too." Hervey Voge

"I have not conquered Everest, it has merely tolerated me" Peter Habeler

"All the winds of Asia seemed to be trying to blow us from the ridge."  Peter Boardman, 1975, about the South Summit

"We took risks. We knew we took them. Things have come out against us. We have no cause for complaint." Scott, found in his diary after the party froze in Antarctica

"When I climb a mountain, I go one step at a time. It gets really hard at times, your body hurts, your mind gets numb with pain. But that is what it is about. To find out who you are. To look deep inside yourself and see what great potential is in there." Theodore Fairhurst.

"Nothing comes easy in life. That is the beauty of it all. You get out of life what you are willing to put into it." Theodore Fairhurst.

"Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman