181 Quotes by Reinhold Messner

I could claim that all my projects are altruistic, but I don't do that. All I'm saying is this: is it really a sacrilege to do the best you can, to express yourself, to do what I do?

Perhaps the true purpose of life is simply to express ourselves as best we can. Maybe my ability to keep finding new challenges appropriate to my age is part of the happiness, the thing that keeps me young, creative, and full of life. The setbacks and the opposition I've encountered are all part of my happiness. I have grown as a result and am still able to lead a self-determined life.

I'm primarily concerned with what happens inside a person when they encounter the mountains. When you climb a mountain, you come back down as a different person. We don't change the mountain by climbing it; we ourselves change.

I came to realize that my path to knowledge would not lead me to libraries, professors, universities, and studies. My path to knowledge was through living life and experiencing reality. I could learn plenty secondhand, but nothing was ever to surpass the experiences I had in the wilderness. All my knowledge of social, scentific, and religious issues has been acquired through personal experience.

Owning things is boring - obligations and responsibilities. It interest me less than creating things. Right now, I'd be prepared to give everything I own to my children and start again from scratch.

What gives me strength is the feeling of being independent. In effect, I'm really just a dilettante. I've lived, explored, and worked - but only in nonjobs. I've often achieved success against all the predictions. And I've done it by following a very simple pattern of behavior: stick at it and do everything in my power to make it happen.

Through my failures I have learned how to live - and the more I failed, the more I learned. In my search for the limits, I have failed more than most, and it is this that has made me successful, over and over again.

For me, "success" is not measured at the end of life. A successful life is what you have when you are doing things. There are moments when I overcome difficulties, and that's when I feel strong and fulfilled. My success, my life, was nothing more than turning ideas into reality.

Friendship requires trust, empathy, and acceptance. I don't want to feel that I have to wear a disguise in front of my friends; otherwise, the friendship is worth nothing. Friendship means being accepted by a person for the way you are, and vice versa.