When asked about the "uselessness of climbing Mt. Everest":
So if you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward, then you won't see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
Our case is not unlike that of one who has, for instance, a gift for music. There may be inconvenience, and even damage, to be sustained in devoting time to music; but the greatest danger is in not devoting enough, for music is this man's adventure. . . . To refuse the adventure is to run the risk of drying up like a pea in its shell.
- George Leigh Mallory
(who later told the press that he climbed mountains because they were there.)
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