The misapprehension about me is that I am some loud, rampant maniac. I am actually very pensive and quiet.

I met Picasso when I was a kid. I turned one of his drawings down which would be worth £37 million now. My dad wouldn't talk to me for a fortnight.

I've become quite a serious explorer: I've been to Everest three times; I'm the oldest man to reach the North Pole; and I've just been to the lost world of Venezuela.

The greatest danger in life is not taking chances. There are so many negative people wanting to grind you down, but you can't let them. If people say you are mad, you know you're on the right track.

Wishing kindness and compassion to all living creatures.

There will be no funeral! Before I get too old and ill, I'll go to South America and live among the Pemon people and meditate. When the time is right, they can throw my body into the volcano.

I fed my Yak on my spare Cadbury chocolate 21,0000ft up Everest. It was a blonde, very sweet female Yak. I made it my pet after that.

In the news this week, the polls continue to slide for Gordon Brown and some people are saying he's dead and buried. But I think the opposite - I say GORDON'S ALIVE!

I'll never retire. The new millennium is the age of adventure as far as I am concerned. I'm going up a volcano and off into space.

My dream is to own a Hockney - I'm a Yorkshireman, and his vibrant colours are a good example of how the north-country people are vibrant and colourful.

In the Arctic I met some Russian sailors on a submarine and they chorused, "Gordon's alive!"

True love is like ghosts which many believe in, but few have seen.

You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever.

I knew without a glimmer of doubt that all things in the universe were connected by a living truth that would not relent its continuing search for wholeness until every form of life was united.

Because of such conjointedness, behavior that exerts no effect whatsoever on outcomes is developed and consistently performed

Either that boy is the sanest creature on Earth, he thought, or he is so disturbed that our tests cannot even begin to scratch the surface.

Admitting your weaknesses does not diminish your strengths: it shows your courage.

When you see a woman who can go nowhere without a staff of admirers, it is not so much because they think she is beautiful, it is because she has told them they are handsome.

How much shall I be changed, before I am changed!

Bill Gates is the pope of the personal computer industry. He decides who is going to build.

We have a Bill of Rights, which protects each of us from a bullying society, but no Bill of Responsibilities, which would oblige us to answer to the needs of others.