Summit Quotes - Page 6

• When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Ocean, Moving, Writing

  "Basin and Range". Book by John McPhee, 1981; reprinted in his book "Annals of the Former World", 1998.

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• It's one of the ironies of mountaineering,' said Young, 'that grown men are happy to spend months preparing for a climb, weeks rehearsing and honing their skills, and at least a day attempting to reach the summit. And then, having achieved their goal, they spend just a few moments enjoying the experience, along with one or two equally certifiable companions who have little in common other than wanting to do it all again, but a little higher.

  Jeffrey Archer

  Men, Skills, Two

  Jeffrey Archer (2009). “Paths of Glory”, p.72, Pan Macmillan

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• Man is the summit, the crown of nature's development, and must comprehend everything that has preceded him, even as the fruit includes within itself all the earlier developed parts of the plant. In a word, Man must represent the whole world in miniature.

  Lorenz Oken

  Nature, Science, Men

  Lorenz Oken, Alfred Tulk (1847). “Elements of Physiophilosophy”, p.2

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• The era of big government is over, but the era of big challenge is not. We need an era of big citizenship. There are many important people at this summit, but the most important title is 'citizen.' This is our republic. Let us keep it!

  William J. Clinton

  Government, People, Volunteer

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• High office, is like a pyramid; only two kinds of animals reach the summit — reptiles and eagles.

  Jean le Rond d'Alembert

  Animal, Eagles, Two

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• There is no royal road to science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a chance of gaining its luminous summits. (Preface to the French edition).

  Karl Marx

  Path, Royal, Chance

  David Harvey, Karl Marx (2010). “A companion to Marx's Capital”, Verso Books

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• St. Paul would say to the philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to attain the Divine. That is why all pre-Christian philosophy is theological at its summit.

  Hans Urs von Balthasar

  Christian, Philosophy, Men

  Hans Urs von Balthasar (1993). “My Work: In Retrospect”, p.99, Ignatius Press

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• No one can be saved without divine light. Divine light causes us to begin and to make progress, and it leads us to the summit of perfection. Therefore if you want to begin and to receive this divine light, pray. If you have begun to make progress and want this light to be intensified within you, pray. And if you have reached the summit of perfection, and want to be super-illumined so as to remain in that state, pray.

  Angela of Foligno

  Light, Perfection, Progress

  "The Memorial and Instructions". Complete Works published by Paulist Press, p. 234, 1993.

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• The rise of the Soviet school to the summit of world chess is a logical result of socialist cultural development.

  Alexander Kotov

  School, Development, World

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• Moreover, the sciences are monuments devoted to the public good; each citizen owes to them a tribute proportional to his talents. While the great men, carried to the summit of the edifice, draw and put up the higher floors, the ordinary artists scattered in the lower floors, or hidden in the obscurity of the foundations, must only seek to improve what cleverer hands have created.

  Charles-Augustin de Coulomb

  Science, Men, Artist

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• Finally, there is more genuine joy in climbing the hill of success, even though sweat may be spent and toes may be stubbed, than in aimlessly sliding down the path to failure. If a straight, honorable path has been chosen, the gaining of the summit yields lasting satisfaction. The morass of failure, if through laziness, indifference or other avoidable fault, yields nothing but ignominy and sorrow for self and family and friends.

  B. C. Forbes

  Success, Yield, Climbing

  "Keys to Success".

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• He stood beneath the white tower, and looked up at it with that mournful expression which his face always carried in repose: for one moment he thought of climbing up its cracked and broken stone, and then from its summit screaming down at the silent city as a child might scream at a chained animal.

  Peter Ackroyd

  Children, Animal, Climbing

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• 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.

  Reinhold Messner

  Spiritual, Floating, Mist

  Reinhold Messner (2001). “Moving Mountains: Lessons on Life and Leadership”, Executive Excellence Publishing

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• Propaganda must appeal to mankind's better judgment and to the necessary belief in a better future. For this belief, the valley of the shadow of death is but a war station on the road to the blessed summit.

  Christian Lous Lange

  War, Blessed, Shadow Of Death

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• The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors. They all need to go on safari together.

  Thomas Friedman

  Together, Needs, Safari

  Thomas L. Friedman (2009). “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why The World Needs A Green Revolution - and How We Can Renew Our Global Future”, p.262, Penguin UK

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• Over the summit, I saw the so-called Mono desert lying dreamily silent in the thick, purple light -- a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.

  John Muir

  Lying, Light, Ice

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.348, Library of America

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• After what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached the summit just as the sun was rising. I couldn't believe that we had actually done it. We were standing at the highest point in all of Africa, looking down at the clouds below us, with the sun directly in front of us, its rays welcoming us to the beginning of a new day. It didn't seem like this was something that humans were meant to experience, yet here we were

  Tony Hsieh

  Motivational, Believe, Clouds

  Tony Hsieh (2010). “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose”, p.80, Hachette UK

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• I did get upset once, when we were hiking between pitches 15 and 16. Two women and a dog were trying to find their way down through the maze of trails below the First Summit and they asked us: 'Are you on the trail?' I let my indignity show: 'NO, we're on a CLIMB!'

  Andy Cairns

  Dog, Two, Hiking

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• There have been summits of civilization at which heretics like Socrates , who was killed because he was wiser than his neighbors, have not been tortured, but ordered to kill themselves in the most painless manner known to their judges. But from that summit there was a speedy relapse into our present savagery.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Civilization, Judging, Neighbor

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.4518, e-artnow

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• [T]he task of abolishing the essence of Jewry is in truth the task of abolishing Jewry in civil society, abolishing the inhumanity of today's practice of life, the summit of which is the money system.

  Karl Marx

  Essence, Practice, Tasks

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1975). “The holy family”, p.148, Рипол Классик

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• On Sunday, the president flies to the Azores islands to attend a summit with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar, and here's my prediction: Bush gets voted off.

  Craig Kilborn

  Sunday, Islands, President

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• Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection, says the German economist and IPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer. The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the worlds resources will be negotiated.

  Ottmar Edenhofer

  Environmental, World, Next

  "IPCC Official: 'Climate Policy Is Redistributing The World’s Wealth'". Interview with Bernard Potter, wattsupwiththat.com. November 18, 2010.

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• While Barack Obama was making his latest pitch for a brand new, even more unsustainable entitlement at the health care 'summit,' thousands of Greeks took to the streets to riot. An enterprising cable network might have shown the two scenes on a continuous split-screen - because they're part of the same story. It's just that Greece is a little further along in the plot: They're at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided, instead, that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe.

  Mark Steyn

  Fall, Two, America

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• Once when I looked up, I happened to see a sea eagle poised on magesterial wings above the knurled summit of the mountain behind my tent. It was a scene of peerless tranquility, tossed out in Nautre's devil-may-care way, which says: Just open your eyes, my friend, and I'll astonish you every minute of your life.

  Lawrence Millman

  Eye, Sea, Wings

  Lawrence Millman, Paul Theroux (2000). “Last Places: A Journey in the North”, p.147, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Heart, Hands, Mountain

  Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). “Report to Greco”, p.384, Simon and Schuster

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