123 quotes found
"My solar plexus was tight with fear as I ploughed on. Halfway up I stopped, exhausted. I could look down 10,000 feet between my legs, and I have never felt more insecure. Anxiously I waved Tenzing up to me."
"Well, we knocked the bastard off!"
"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’ve always hated the danger part of climbing, and it’s great to come down again because it’s safe … But there is something about building up a comradeship — that I still believe is the greatest of all feats — and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation."
"It was too late to take risks now. I asked Tenzing to belay me strongly, and I started cutting a cautious line of steps up the ridge. Peering from side to side and thrusting with my ice axe, I tried to discover a possible cornice, but everything seemed solid and firm. I waved Tenzing up to me. A few more whacks of the ice–ax, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest. It was 11:30 AM. My first sensation was one of relief — relief that the long grind was over, that the summit had been reached before our oxygen supplies had dropped to a critical level; and relief that in the end the mountain had been kind to us in having a pleasantly rounded cone for its summit instead of a fearsome and unapproachable cornice. But mixed with the relief was a vague sense of astonishment that I should have been the lucky one to attain the ambition of so many brave and determined climbers. I seemed difficult to grasp that we'd got there. I was too tired and too conscious of the long way down to safety really to feel any great elation. But as the fact of our success thrust itself more clearly into my mind, I felt a quiet glow of satisfaction spread through my body — a satisfaction less vociferous but more powerful than I had ever felt on a mountain top before. I turned and looked at Tenzing. Even beneath his oxygen mask and the icicles hanging form his hair, I could see his infectious grin of sheer delight. I held out my hand, and in silence we shook in good Anglo-Saxon fashion. But this was not enough for Tenzing, and impulsively he threw his arm around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back in mutual congratulations."
"Tenzing had been waiting patiently, but now, at my request, he unfurled the flags wrapped around his ice–axe and standing at the summit, held them above his head. Clad in all his bulky equipment and with the flags flapping furiously in the wind, he made a dramatic picture, and the thought drifted through my mind that this photograph should be a good one if it came out at all. I didn't worry about getting Tenzing to take a photograph of me — as far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how."
"Reaching the summit of a mountain gives great satisfaction, but nothing for me has been more rewarding in life than the result of our climb on Everest, when we have devoted ourselves to the welfare of our Sherpa friends."
"While standing on top of Everest, I looked across the valley, towards the other great peak, Makalu, and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed… it showed me that, even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything for me, by any means. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges."
"Having just paid our respects to the highest mountain in the world, I then had no choice but to urinate on it."
"You don't have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things — to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. The intense effort, the giving of everything you've got, is a very pleasant bonus."
"Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it."
"I think the whole attitude towards climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. The people just want to get to the top. They don't give a damn for anybody else who may be in distress and it doesn't impress me at all that they leave someone lying under a rock to die."
"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. It would have been a disaster from our point of view. There have been a number of occasions when people have been neglected and left to die and I don’t regard this as a correct philosophy. I am absolutely certain that if any member of our expedition all those years ago had been in that situation we would have made every effort."
"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."
"I became a Hindu. I was very close to the Hindu ethic. It was a great spiritual experience. ... I believe a man can make his own destiny through his work and effort."
"Some day I’m going to climb Everest."
"In some ways I believe I epitomise the average New Zealander: I have modest abilities, I combine these with a good deal of determination, and I rather like to succeed."
"We didn’t know if it was humanly possible to reach the top of Mt. Everest. And even using oxygen as we were, if we did get to the top, we weren’t at all sure whether we wouldn’t drop dead or something of that nature."
"I was very much aware that we still had to get safely back down the mountain again and that was quite an important factor. I really felt the most excitement when we finally got to the bottom of the mountain again and it was all behind us."
"I was just an enthusiastic mountaineer of modest abilities who was willing to work quite hard and had the necessary imagination and determination. I was just an average bloke; it was the media that transformed me into a heroic figure. And try as I did, there was no way to destroy my heroic image. But as I learned through the years, as long as you didn’t believe all that rubbish about yourself, you wouldn’t come to much harm."
"The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit lives on. It is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, not for what he may find."
"I don't know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt, either, that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics. That has given me more satisfaction than a footprint on a mountain."
"People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things."
"It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves."
"Hillary has climbed to the top of the world. He has put the British race and New Zealand on top of the world."
"The beekeeper and the Sherpa, one from a remote former colony of the Crown on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, the other from the edge of the heavens. They affirmed the power of humble determination and, placing themselves firmly with the mythic paradigms of their respective cultures, won one for the underdogs. … On this lonely planet of freeze dried food, computer generated fabrics and commercialised mountain climbing, it is almost impossible to imagine the earth-shaking impact that Hillary and Norgay’s achievement had in 1953. For many it represented the last of the earth’s great challenges. It placed Hillary in the lineage of great terrestrial explorers. … His achievement as one of mankind’s great accomplishments came at one of the last times in history when such a feat could still be recognised as a distinctly human one, and not technological. … Hillary’s near-mythical status puts him on a plateau above sporting heroes, for he has distinguished himself well beyond the singularity of a mountain. From a feat that would have been the crowning achievement of many careers, he has gone on to become a humanitarian, an ambassador and elder statesman, never giving up, never giving in to either despair or complacency, always planning the next goal."
"The Sherpa gasped out as they mounted the slope, "Our troubles are only commencing!" Said Sir Edmund, "You're tired and nervous, relax - You'll nEverest if you're Tensing.""
"Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time."
"The real point of mountain climbing, as of most hard sports, is that it voluntarily tests the human spirit against the fiercest odds, not that it achieves anything more substantial — or even wins the contest, for that matter. For the most part, its heroism is of a subjective kind. It was the fate of Hillary and Tenzing, though, to become very public heroes indeed, and it was a measure of the men that over the years they truly grew into the condition. Perhaps they thought that just being the first to climb a hill was hardly qualification for immortality; perhaps they instinctively realized destiny had another place for them. For they both became, in the course of time, representatives not merely of their particular nations but of half of humanity. Astronauts might justly claim that they were envoys of all humanity; Hillary and Tenzing, in a less spectacular kind, came to stand for the small nations of the world, the young ones, the tucked-away and the up-and-coming."
"I liked these men very much when I first met them on the mountain nearly a half-century ago, but I came to admire them far more in the years that followed. I thought their brand of heroism — the heroism of example, the heroism of debts repaid and causes sustained — far more inspiring than the gung-ho kind. Did it really mean much to the human race when Everest was conquered for the first time? Only because there became attached to the memory of the exploit, in the years that followed, a reputation for decency, kindness and stylish simplicity. Hillary and Tenzing fixed it when they knocked the bastard off."
"In Russia - Poets are considered a danger to the political system and are sent into Asylums. What a compliment to the Russian People that poetry could move them so. In NZ Poets are not considered a danger. No one reads poetry Poets aren't sent to Asylums but they are considered mad nonetheless"
"I often write about the period and I do so with wistfulness rather than triumph. It is a period which was absolutely significant in New Zealand's history. It was a period which was calling out for the government we had in 1984 to 1987 and it was a chance where the social richness of New Zealand could have been enhanced because of its economic wealth and where instead the obsession for money overran any form of political, social, human sense."
"After a very long year we've got a very short knight."
"I agreed with the prevailing opinion in the Labour Party about nuclear weapons; I went on ban-the-bomb marches in the 1960s and I have not changed my mind about nuclear deterrence since. But I found it hard to accept the Labour Party’s policy that required the exclusion of nuclear-powered ships. Given that nuclear energy exists it is the intention behind its use that matters. The weapons are made to destroy and we have to learn to live without them. The rest may be useful if properly managed. The management is an environmental issue and the inevitable exclusion of nuclear-powered vessels was not an appropriate basis for our foreign policy."
"If the American global strategy is dependent on the ability of nuclear ships to come to New Zealand, then God defend the world."
"We are an enemy of the nuclear threat and we are an enemy of testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific. New Zealand did not buy into this fight. France put agents into New Zealand. France put spies into New Zealand. France lets off bombs in the Pacific. France puts its President in the Pacific to crow about it."
"...a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism."
"Death is very, very terminal."
"They couldn't, in the National Party, run a bath and if either the deputy leader or the leader tried to, Sir Robert would run away with the plug."
"The statement which has been made by the Leader of the Opposition was that the intelligence has stopped. I don't know whether that was a personal confession or whether it was a statement of position."
"An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones."
"After that, whenever I drove past Mangakahia, I would empty my ashtray — and I was a heavy smoker in those days — on the road outside the hall."
"Greens are not expected to be anything but nice."
"I wouldn't call the Prime Minister gutless. That's all that's left of him."
"He had more on his mind than his mind could hold."
"When asked, "Does God help you?": "He's not really in caucus lately.""
"When asked, "So, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?": "I'm going to be a jockey.""
"And I'm going to give it to you if you hold your breath just for a moment … I can smell the uranium on it as you lean towards me."
"Our military forces are an arm of government, just like the Department of Social Welfare, although probably less able to inflict widespread harm."
"On seeing a machine labelled "media steriliser", Lange quipped: "Have that sent to my office immediately.""
"On Roger Douglas: "He's like rust, he never sleeps.""
"He's gone around the country stirring up apathy."
"...an economic ignoramus unfit to oversee a fifty-cent raffle."
"What a friend we have in cheeses."
"Once while waiting at Auckland airport, Lange insisted on buying himself a newspaper and joined a queue at a newsstand. The woman in front of him turned around and said, "Good God!" Lange replied affably, "No madam, you are mistaken. I have never made that claim.""
"My back is so scar-tissued that you couldn't find a place to slip a knife."
"...it all happened so quickly you got a lot of bewilderment; you get a lot of people who are basically meat-and-three-veg quarter-acre New Zealanders who find themselves eating dim sims with chopsticks and they can't cope."
"Bassett was a member of parliament and a cousin on my father's side of the family. My father delivered him and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him."
"He viewed humour as a relaxing introduction to many situations. "It is, of course, completely inappropriate in some... but in the end, you know, if you were serious in this job you'd go mad.""
"To US Ambassador H. Monroe Browne, who owned a racehorse called Lacka Reason: "You are the only ambassador in the world to race a horse named after your country's foreign policy.""
"Winston Peters: "the only member of Parliament named after a concrete block, and I can understand that.""
"Will the United States pull the rug on New Zealand? The answer is no. They might polish the lino a bit harder and hope that I execute a rather unseemly glide across it."
"I've got two shirts still missing from the Bahamas. I'm sure they are part of a youth camping programme somewhere in Tanzania by now."
"I went in a round of the Domain on Saturday morning in a rally car. At the start of it, I was asked if I felt scared. I said, 'certainly not, I have been working with Roger for years'."
"a man whose life is so boring that if it flashed past he wouldn't be in it"
"Lange was hosting a reception at Vogel House for the Chinese politician Hu Yao Bang when the lights went out. Lange immediately asked all the guests to raise their hands because "many hands make light work." The audience complied, and to their amazement the lights immediately came back on. Lange was invited to visit China."
"On a trip to Germany, Lange and his entourage were climbing the tower of an ancient castle when they stopped to catch their breath. "How old is this ruin?" someone asked a guide. "Forty-two years," said Lange."
"My voice likes rock music. My problem is, I can do a lot of things, but I have to find my own voice."
"So yes, the roles are getting more and more like me. But that's because Xena was so entirely unlike me. Most people aren't really aware of that."
"They either overcompensate for the way they feel and are incredibly sycophantic or incredibly brusque in order to prove they don't think you're superior."
"The role was very physically challenging and I am not athletic and have never wanted to be. I hate it in fact. I don't go to gyms and for me to have to stay in shape for the role became mind over matter."
"I'm gonna walk off wearing the outfit and I'm going to drive home in it."
"What's Buffy got? A wooden stake, some garlic. Xena has a full arsenal of weapons."
"When you decide to become an opera singer, it's a commitment that allows nothing else to interfere. Even your family - and I have a young daughter - has to take second place."
"At first, being a female role model really terrified me. But it hasn't turned out to be an awful burden. I get a lot of letters from women who tell me that, after watching Xena, they have bought the Harley-Davidson they always wanted or left an abusive relationship."
"They're also surprised I'm only 6 feet tall. They expect someone much bigger. They say I'm younger and prettier in person, which I like."
"Growing up, I looked up to real women. I didn't go in for hero worship and I still don't. Everybody has feet of clay."
"Up until I came here this week, and I met so many women and young girls who feel, to use their word - and I'm a bit embarrassed, but it's a good word - empowered, by watching. I realized this isn't a burden, this is an honor."
"Feminists might identify with me because I'm unapologetic in what they think is a male-dominated world … no, I guess, what is a male-dominated world."
"I never thought I'd be an action star, but now they're going to make little Xena action figures for kids. I still want to be a fine actress one day; it's just a matter of putting in the time and passion."
"It took me a long time to adjust and narrow down my life. I made my shift to the mind-set … there's time for my daughter outside work and that's all. This is my new life. This is not drudgery. This is fun."
"Lucy's got two feet on the ground; she's very, very strong and yet has a wonderful soft side that she reveals here. She's a dream to work with."
"You doubt where you're going, you doubt the way you shave in the morning and even the way you talk to people. Looking back on my past, I think that when you are out of form I attribute it to how I am in my life. I guess it was a reflection of the way I was playing my cricket, you know, I was inconsistent."
"Lancashire have brought in a player with a great reputation in the format who will add firepower to our top order. He is an exciting player and excellent fielder, just what we need for Twenty20 cricket."
""They can't promise anything because I've spent it all"."
""They won’t put up a statue to me. No, no, no. Nobody’s got that sense of humour"."
""I came here [Parliament] to help people, not to hurt people, and I find that it has not been possible for me this year to stop very many people from being hurt"."
""Arnold Nordmeyer had probably the most brilliant mind of any politician in my time but his political reputation was destroyed by the 1958 "black" budget. He was a remarkable politician and parliamentarian, as straight as they come, and, I repeat, about the most intelligent that I have come across"."
""There was a lady walking down the pavement and as we passed she stopped and she said: 'I know you, don't I?' ... I said: 'My name's Muldoon.'. She said: 'You're not related to that bastard in Parliament, are you?'. And on that salutary note Mr Speaker, I say goodbye"."
"We are a free and independent nation but in time of trouble we stand with our mother country...New Zealand's decision to break off diplomatic relations with Argentina over the Falklands, immediately after Britain had done so, was not because of Britain's support on the sporting issue. The reason goes much deeper than that. It is in the context of the statement made by a Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1939: "Where Britain goes, we go." We see the Falklands as British territory and the Falklands Islanders as subjects of our Queen. We live at the end of the line and we know the feeling of isolation...With the Falklands Islands, it is family. Historically, Britain has so often on great occasions thrown up the leader that the occasion demanded. I regard Margaret Thatcher as one of the finest and straightest politicians I have ever met...In 1939 we learned the folly of appeasement. A great catastrophe was the price that was paid. The military rulers of Argentina must not be appeased. New Zealand will back Britain all the way."
"Shortly after I entered Parliament, it became clear to me that I had too many friends. What I needed was some enemies. There was no way that I was ever going to get across the message that I wanted to give to the people of this country if I used the soft, simple word, offending no-one and in fact being heard by no-one."
"New Zealand was colonised initially by those Australians who had the initiative to escape."
"He wanted to be remembered as a person who left New Zealand no worse than he found it. My own view is that he did leave it with substantial problems and substantial dilemmas which have taken us a lot of time and no little anguish to sort out."
"He was an arrogant, pigheaded doctrinaire fool."
"Muldoon was an enigma, he worried, he disliked the rich and the powerful and the establishment. He had a very paternal attitude to the poor and powerless. It was a typical Labour Party attitude."
"This Prime Minister outgoing, beaten, has, in the course of one television interview, tried to do more damage to the New Zealand economy than any statement ever made. He has actually alerted the world to a crisis. And like King Canute he stands there and says everyone is wrong but me."
"Muldoon, in 1975, had got a huge electoral mandate and he'd squandered it."
"I feel that if I am busting my arse, if I am stretching at night, if I am working hard in the gym, if I am doing all of my extras out on the field, if I am the first one there and the last to leave or whatever, and if I am giving my all every game, then I deserve to be the man I want to be rather than the man other people want me to be."
"Every sport has helped me excel in another. Boxing has given me the mental strength to know that I can face anything on the field, without a doubt."
"I am the first to jump up and say that I am a proud Samoan."
"I feel like I am on the right path now. It has helped me with my confidence on the sporting field and with my self-belief, but outside of sport my life is a lot smoother too. Like everyone, I have my faults and I veer off the path sometimes, but my faith helps me get back on it and to stay being a good person. I am a lot happier now in my own skin."
"[Her birth] was the best moment of my life, by far, and it didn't do it justice watching it on Skype...When I saw my child for the first time it just switched the switch, you know. That's when you realise you love something more than you love yourself."
"If you don't have massive dreams, you might as well stay in bed."
"In 20 years time, I want to say 'didn't I have a go when I was in my prime', and I went back to play rugby league, tried to make the Rugby World Cup, tried to make the Olympics or tried to win the World Cup with the Kiwis."
"When I finish my sporting career it's not about what I've done, or being remembered as a legend. For me it's just about being the best father, husband and man I can be."
"I try not to read too much in the media because they're either gonna put you on a pedestal too high or underplay you."
"In terms of Sonny Bill, well Sonny Bill’s one of the most gifted players we’ve ever seen, big or small. His physical presence, his athleticism, his ability to play like a halfback, but with the strength and offloading ability of Arthur Beetson; it’s a pretty good package, Sonny Bill Williams."
"What’s the Sonny Bill Effect? Without doubt, he’s been a giant of the club. There’s the athletic ability and the consummate professionalism. He works as hard on his preparation as any player I’ve ever seen. Of course he’s a natural, but there’s a lot of hard work that goes into making it so natural. He’s the modern-day sportsman. He’s helped turn us into a modern-day club. There’s no drinking, there’s no smoking, there’s none of the partying habits that can drag rugby league down. The influence of Sonny Bill? We’re talking about an icon of our sport and this club."
"In 2013, Sonny Bill Williams drove the Roosters to glory with the skill, footwork and defensive weaponry that makes him arguably the most complete back-rower the code has seen."
"He changed the game around with the offload and the way a No.12 plays. He's strong, and he's quick for his size as well, with pretty good skills for a big guy. He did really well when he played the game."
"[T]he most gifted footballer I’ve ever seen..."
"[He's] the smartest on the uptake that I have encountered."
"I’ve never coached a more professional footy player in attitude."
"The only thing to contemplate there is this raw force. It's as much terror as beauty. You don't feel welcomed by the natural world – I completely felt like an interloper."
"I'm a feminist and the theme of her song is, 'When you're ready come and get it from me.' I'm sick of women being portrayed this way."
"I'm going vegan, hate this."
"I will probably end my life fighting. … I just hope that if it does happen, it will be in an honest and fair competition. My body is fucked but my mind is still here. I’ve still got my senses about me and I know what’s right and wrong, which is the main thing. … I feel proud that I got here without cheating. Proud that I got here without taking any shortcuts and by doing it the proper way. My way. … I’d be champ already if it wasn’t for the cheaters. … We need the Ali Act put in place. Fighters want to know what they’re worth. … These guys don’t get paid jack shit."
"Here’s my attitude, and I’m sort of sorry to say this sometimes – but there are people who try and elevate film music - of all kinds – to being the great twentieth century classical music, and my opinion is it just isn’t. It’s very straightforward, major/minor or modal writing. The only time you get any kind of originality is usually in the timbres and the sounds and the mixture of elements. But to get through a scene it’s either happy, or sad – and it’s either going forward in action or it’s not – and it can be ironic, which means you’ve got to switch from major to minor frequently. But it’s not rocket science. It’s a lot of skills – a lot of political skills, frankly. It’s being in a room and playing off fifty opinions from studios, producers, directors, sometimes actors – and coming out the end with something that vaguely represents music. And frequently it doesn’t. The minute you try to get original or break the box – unless you’ve got either a very experimental or powerful director, it’s probably not going to happen."
"I feel just as much compulsion to be an architect, for example, as I do a musician. And I feel inestimably guilty that I cannot fulfil the vocation for which I was trained - that of an economist specialising in problems of underdevelopment. My sadness stems from the fact that I do not have several lifetimes to lead."
"We are a society of apostolic life, so there’s going to be a common life … there must be fraternal life. If there’s no fraternal life, priests become extremely susceptible to the wiles and snares of the devil."
"People must be able to see within us and within the Church, not the structures and authority we have, but the presence of Jesus Christ. We must avoid the danger of placing so much emphasis on the "Magisterium" of the Church that we lose the sense of the "Mysterium" of the Church."