“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.” ― Ed Viesturs

“Because it’s there.” ― George Mallory

“Climb if you will, but remember that courage and strength are nought without prudence, and that a momentary negligence may destroy the happiness of a lifetime. Do nothing in haste; look well to each step; and from the beginning think what may be the end.” ― Edward Whymper

“After climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.” ― Nelson Mandela

“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.” ― Edmund Hillary

“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

“There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people who can find pleasure in it.” ― Mark Twain

“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” Evan Hardin

“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

“Mountain climbing is extended periods of intense boredom, interrupted by occasional moments of sheer terror.” ― Anonymous

“There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.” ― Sir Rannulph Fiennes

“Identifying and overcoming natural fear is one of the pleasing struggles intrinsic to climbing.” ― Alex Lowe

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” ― T. S. Eliot

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place ? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.” ― René Daumal

“Somewhere between the bottom of the climb and the summit is the answer to the mystery why we climb.” ― Greg Child

“Mountains seem to answer an increasing imaginative need in the West. More and more people are discovering a desire for them, and a powerful solace in them. At bottom, mountains, like all wildernesses, challenge our complacent conviction – so easy to lapse into – that the world has been made for humans by humans. Most of us exist for most of the time in worlds which are humanly arranged, themed and controlled. One forgets that there are environments which do not respond to the flick of a switch or the twist of a dial, and which have their own rhythms and orders of existence. Mountains correct this amnesia. By speaking of greater forces than we can possibly invoke, and by confronting us with greater spans of time than we can possibly envisage, mountains refute our excessive trust in the man-made. They pose profound questions about our durability and the importance of our schemes. They induce, I suppose, a modesty in us.” ― Robert Macfarlane

“In the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” ― Jack Kerouac

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street.” ―William Blake

“Mountains are not stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve, they are thecathedrals where I practice my religion.” ― Anatoli Boukreev

“Mountains have a way of dealing with overconfidence.” ― Nemann Buhl

“In a sense everything that is exists to climb. All evolution is a climbing towards a higher form. Climbing for life as it reaches towards the consciousness, towards the spirit. We have always honored the high places because we sense them to be the homes of gods. In the mountains there is the promise of… something unexplainable. A higher place of awareness, a spirit that soars. So we climb… and in climbing there is more than a metaphor; there is a means of discovery.” ― Rob Parker

“In the mountains there are only two grades: You can either do it, or you can’t.” ― Rusty Baille

“Any coward can sit at home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather by far die on a mountainside than in bed.” ― Charles Lindbergh

“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”

― Friedrich Neitszche

And of course the ever popular Instagram staples..

“Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.”

― David McCullough Jr.

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” ― Sir Edmund Hillary

“The mountains are calling and I must go.” ― John Muir