In the West, the art of rock climbing is growing because it has to do with less risk, good muscles. But the people seeking high goals in high places are in Eastern Europe, and they reach their goals because they are willing to suffer more.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the difference in attitudes toward challenges between the West and Eastern Europe, highlighting the willingness to endure hardship for greater achievements.
Reinhold Messner's quote reflects on the contrasting approaches to rock climbing and goal achievement between the West and Eastern Europe. While Western climbers often prioritize safety and physical fitness, those in Eastern Europe demonstrate a remarkable resilience and willingness to endure suffering, thereby reaching higher goals. This speaks to a broader theme of how the pursuit of excellence often requires sacrifice and courage.
In practice
This quote could be used in a motivational speech about the importance of perseverance.
I became famous for the fact that I would break many, many limits. People said, 'He does all these crazy things.' But oddly it was a crazy thing only because scientists and climbers said, 'Everest and the 8,000-meter peaks without oxygen - impossible. Messner is becoming sick in his head.'
A 30-year-old rock climber is an old man. At 40, one is in the middle of his high-altitude power. At 50, a crosser of deserts is at his best age. But at 60, each of us is out of the game.
I think my cultural work is more important than the adventures I did. The adventures are not important for human beings. It's the conquering of the useless.
In mountaineering, there is not only the activity, but the philosophy behind it. Some say a moral, but I am against that because all morality is dangerous.
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.
In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits.
It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment's grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one's life.
He could beat anything, he thought, because no thing could hurt him if he did not care.
The hero and the coward both feel exactly the same fear, only the hero confronts his fear and converts it into fire.
The end of violence or the aftermath of violence is bitterness. The aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of a beloved community. A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption.
All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.
And I fell violently on my face.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.