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George Lowe was the one who opened the mail, and George started laughing uproariously and I looked up at him in astonishment and said, What's so funny? And he said, You've been given a title, and I said, Ha, ha, big joke. I didn't believe him but, sure enough, in this letter it indicated that the Queen had given me a title.

Edmund Hillary

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Edmund Hillary
Age: 88 †
Born: 1919
Born: July 20
Died: 2008
Died: January 11
Autobiographer
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Diplomat
Explorer
Mountaineer
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Tāmaki Makaurau
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary
Sir Edmund Hillary
Ed Hillary
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More quotes by Edmund Hillary

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I never talk about being leaders and all the rest of it. I can only remember one or two occasions in my life when I actually issued orders, and I felt thoroughly miserable after doing it.
Edmund Hillary
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I have to admit I do get a bit depressed at times and you know I think about the good old days when I was charging ahead.
Edmund Hillary
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I had a very strong desire to carry out adventures, but in those early days I didn't actually do any. I just dreamt about it.
Edmund Hillary
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When I was 50 years old, I actually decided to draw up a list of half a dozen things that I really hadn't done very well, and I was going to make efforts to improve. One of them was skiing, and I really did become a very much better skier.
Edmund Hillary
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I've often thought about that and the only suitable member to join me on that climb [to Everest] was George Lowe: he was strong, a good man on a mountain, with a great sense of humour, and I liked that. I think George and I could've done that together ... I've probably never told George that.
Edmund Hillary
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I have discovered that even the mediocre can have adventures and even the fearful can achieve.
Edmund Hillary
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Everest you won't change, but I will get better...I will conquer you.
Edmund Hillary
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I started to become more active and when I was at Auckland Grammar I went for the first time to the mountains. I went to Ruapehu and for the first time I saw snow. I had never seen snow before and for 10 days the group of us had a marvellous time.
Edmund Hillary
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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.
Edmund Hillary
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Environmental problems are really social problems anyway. They begin with people as the cause and end with people as the victims
Edmund Hillary
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I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it.
Edmund Hillary
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It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.
Edmund Hillary
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Nothing can replace courage, a resounding motivation and that little bit of luck.
Edmund Hillary
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[Derek] Shackleton was a man who - it's probably arrogant to say it - but he was a little bit like me. He undertook incredible dangers and carried on over the sea and over the ice and all the rest of it. He was a remarkable man.
Edmund Hillary
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We had so much in common [with June Hillary] that we just carried on with life as we had been doing. It wasn't easy, but it was - I realise now that it was the only thing to do.
Edmund Hillary
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I was definitely seriously affected [with wifw and daughter deaths], no question, but I learnt to devote myself to the things that we'd been doing for years and years and slowly the pain drifted away.
Edmund Hillary
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I think my strengths perhaps are that I'm determined. I may not be the best climber in the world, but I do like to sort of succeed and so that tends to drive me on, as it were, and I don't give up too easily.
Edmund Hillary
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It's all bullshit on Everest these days.
Edmund Hillary
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Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I've been called a great adventurer.
Edmund Hillary
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I have the challenges sort of already there and as a consequence my companions feel a considerable desire to do this, too, and they feel very put out if they are left in the cold, so there we have it. We have me who has lots of ideas and then we have a very good team who wish - who are persuaded almost - to take part in these challenges.
Edmund Hillary