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You Can Solo-climb Everest Without Using Oxygen Or You Can Pay Guides And Sherpas To Carry Your Loads, Put Ladders Across Crevasses, Lay In 6,000 Feet Of Fixed Ropes, And Have One Sherpa Pulling You And Another Pushing You. ... The Goal Of Climbing Big, Dangerous Mountains Should Be To Attain Some Sort Of Spiritual And Personal Growth, But This Won't Happen If You Compromise Away The Entire Process.

We Choose To Believe That The Granite Is Alive. If Life Is Movement, Then Rock - With Its Atoms Flying Around Like Stars In Cosmos - Is Alive.

Climbing For Speed Records Will Probably Become More Popular, A Mania Which Has Just Begun. Climbers Climb Not Just To See How Fast And Efficiently They Can Do It, But Far Worse, To See How Much Faster And More Efficiently They Are Than A Party Which Did The Same Climb A Few Days Before. The Climb Becomes Secondary, No More Important Than A Racetrack. Man Is Pitted Against Man.

I Say The Last 10 Percent Of The Way To Perfection Takes So Much Of Your Life That It Isn't Worth The Effort. This Overzealous Attitude Is What Creates Religious Fanatics, Body Nazis, And Athletes Who Are Exceedingly Dull To Converse With.

While Our Managers Debated What Steps To Take To Address The Sales And Cash-flow Crisis, I Began To Lead Week-long Employee Seminars In What We Called Philosophies. We'd Take A Busload At A Time To Places Like Yosemite Or The Marin Headlands Above San Francisco, Camp Out, And Gather Under The Trees To Talk. The Goal Was To Teach Every Employee In The Company Our Business And Environmental Ethics And Values.