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Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

— Edmund Hillary Wise Guys : Brilliant Thoughts and Big Talk from Real Men (2005)

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More quotes by Edmund Hillary

On my expedition there was no way that you would have left a man under a rock to die. It simply would not have happened.

I am hell-bent for the South Pole — God willing and crevasses permitting.

Better if he had said something natural like, "Jesus, here we are."

I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.

Having just paid our respects to the highest mountain in the world, I then had no choice but to urinate on it.

View from the Summit Simon and Schuster (2000)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Edmund Hillary (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.