I would never bring a flag on the summit. If somebody is climbing for a country he is not normal, he is sick.

For years I was a rock climber and nothing else. I went to school, yes, and university, yes, but in my heart I was a rock climber.

Climbing is not a competition, and you cannot talk in terms of 'greatest,' it means nothing.

The museum at Ortles is dedicated to the world of ice so we wanted visitors to feel like they were inside a glacier.

I started the whole 'Into Thin Air' thing - nothing I'm proud of.

Traditional alpinism is slowly disappearing. It is becoming sport, indoors on small walls with holds where you cannot really fall.

When I lost seven of my toes on Nanga Parbat and small parts of my fingertips I knew I'd never be a great rock climber. So I specialized in high-altitude climbing.

Alpinism means you go by yourself with your own responsibility, knowing that you could die. But Everest now is more like ski tourism: preparing the piste, helping people go up, setting oxygen bottles near the summit.

For me, climbing has always been about adventure and that involves difficulties, danger and exposure, so I deliberately set out to climb with as little equipment as possible.

When I was a small child, I began on small mountains. Now, as I am getting older, the small peaks are getting bigger. If I am lucky, some day I will end on a small peak.

My aim is not just to help preserve what is left of mountain life, but to create a centre where people can study and learn about it.

I am responsible for my brother's death. I feel the guilt of having survived. People say, 'You should be happy. You survived.' But I have this feeling that it is not right that I am alive.

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.

Anyone who ever witnessed Ueli Steck flying up the Eigerwand would know that he was always in control of his actions. He was always moving with immense precision and a sense of safety.

Climbing has so much more culture than all other activities put together. There is no culture in tennis, just a few names, a few dates. No big culture in soccer. But we have thousands of books, great philosophers, thinkers, painters.

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.

There are three elements of mountaineering - difficulty, danger, and exposure. Difficulty is the technical aspect of it. Danger, it is best to avoid, but some people like to increase danger to a point where their success is dependent only on luck. And exposure, which is what truly defines Alpinism, is what you face in wild nature.

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.

For me the Everest solo was the icing on the cake of my climbs: the highest mountain in the world, during a monsoon, and as far as possible even on a new route, of course without oxygen.

I'm a storyteller. I do this for the next generations. They have to know what traditional alpinism is all about.

To me, it's just not that important whether someone climbs the Eigerwand in ten hours or in three.

Ueli Steck, I'm absolutely certain, had a very strong inner drive to keep pushing. He set very high standards for himself.

Mountaineering is over. Alpinism is dead. Maybe its spirit is still alive a little in Britain and America, but it will soon die out.

I have always said that a mountain without danger is not a mountain.

Look, I do not control alpinism. But maybe I was too successful. Many in the mountaineering scene - journalists, second-rate climbers, lecturers, so-called historians - had a problem with me for many years.

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 climbing there is no question of right or wrong. Moral right or wrong, that is a religious question, they have nothing to do with anarchical activity, and classical mountaineering is a completely anarchical activity.

I was 5 when I went up my first 10,000 ft mountain, with my parents, and I have been climbing ever since.

The Dolomites are the most beautiful rock mountains in the world, but in a few million years they will just be desert.

The ayatollahs are trying to unite the whole Arab world against Israel by saying that Israel is something that should be brought to an end.

I was born to a Likud which had light; there were no shadows.

Learning the core curriculum cannot come through coercion. It must come through a recognition of the need to integrate with economic life.

The establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a real trauma for the Palestinians.

I'm not opposed to talking with anyone who is willing to talk.

We must remember that Islam is not an enemy, and we have no war with Islam.

All humanity share a common future, and we must work to try and shape it together. This is our duty, and it is our responsibility to our children and grandchildren.

What happens in one region affects people across the world.

There is a crisis on the Right. It sees the Jewish and democratic state as a democracy for the Jews. This is something I cannot countenance.

Even if the Right says that Um Al-Fahm should be outside Israel, this is impossible.

I won't allow any party to evade the question of which leader they support for prime minister.

We can establish a Jewish and democratic state, but the burden of proof is on us.

The ability of the president to be perceived as someone with whom all Israelis can identify depends on his ability to avoid being a party to debate.

The politicization of the presidency would pose a real threat to the institution and its function.

All over the Middle East, we face difficult challenges: the ongoing tragedy in Syria, the instability in Iraq, and the jihadist terrorism which dares to speak in the name of Islam, brings so many to seek refuge. The Hashemite Kingdom is facing all these challenges with honor, with dignity, and with great national and human solidarity.

Conflicts, even just ones, which in the end can come at the expense of the State of Israel, are things that we must be very cautious about and hold back on personally.

We also need the world, even though many times we don't agree with it.

United Jerusalem has been and will forever be the capital of the Jewish People.

I ask the members of the Knesset to be very strict about maintaining the principles of democracy.

One cannot tell the High Court what to adjudicate. They must judge, and then the legislature must act accordingly.

When we come to the hospital to give birth, we don't come as a Jew or an Arab; we come as a human being.