Reinhold Messner Quotes

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Reinhold Messner

Profession : Explorer

Birth : September 17, 1944

Climbing is all about freedom, the freedom to go beyond all the rules and take a chance, to experience something new, to gain insight into human nature.

Reinhold Messner

For me, imagination is more important in climbing than muscle or daredevil antics.

Reinhold Messner

Each mountain in the Dolomites is like a piece of art.

Reinhold Messner

Mountains are not fair or unfair - they are dangerous.

Reinhold Messner

I like Nietzsche. I quote him in many of my books. He was born 100 years before me.

Reinhold Messner

By climbing mountains we were not learning how big we were. We were finding out how breakable, how weak and how full of fear we are.

Reinhold Messner

My brother is in me. When we remember somebody else, in a certain way they are still alive. I see my brother - he is still young - looking to the Dolomites where we did our ascents. I remember those moments, so he is still together with me.

Reinhold Messner

Adventure has to do with private, personal experiences. But, the possibilities, there are millions of unclimbed mountains - I have seen in the Eastern part of Tibet, mountains 6,000-6,500 meters high, vertical walls twice as tall as the Eiger... but nobody is going there, because they aren't 8,000-meter peaks.

Reinhold Messner

All nationalism is dangerous; all religions are dangerous.

Reinhold Messner

I am my own home, and my handkerchief is my flag.

Reinhold Messner

First, I am afraid to die and I love to live. But an adventure is only an adventure when there is the threat of dying.

Reinhold Messner

I am responsible for my brother's death. I feel the guilt of having survived. People say, 'You should be happy. You survived.' But I have this feeling that it is not right that I am alive.

Reinhold Messner

This is one of my definitions of mountaineering: to go where others do not.

Reinhold Messner

In politics, you have to compromise from morning to evening. Democracy is the art of compromise.

Reinhold Messner

The art of climbing is to go where you go knowing that you could die, but you don't die. That is adventure.

Reinhold Messner

Crossing the Gobi was a real milestone for me.

Reinhold Messner

When I lost seven of my toes on Nanga Parbat and small parts of my fingertips I knew I'd never be a great rock climber. So I specialized in high-altitude climbing.

Reinhold Messner

I have the feeling that behind a certain dimension we cannot anymore see, understand, feel, smell, hear - nothing. What people are calling God I am not defining, but I am a 'possibilitiest.'

Reinhold Messner

William Blake said 200 years ago that when man and mountains meet, something big is happening. I'm searching for the 'big.'

Reinhold Messner

I was the first man to climb the world's 14 tallest peaks without supplementary oxygen, but I never asked how high I would go, just how I would do it.

Reinhold Messner