While I was serving, I worked as an adventure training officer, teaching soldiers how to ski, canoe and climb.

There's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing

Whenever feasible, pick your team on character, not skill. You can teach skills; you can't teach character.

There is no bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.

People who go to the polar regions are statistically less likely to die than salesmen who drive on motorways in England.

The ultimate starting point for planning any adventure or expeditionby far and away the greatest book on earth

Rivalry is one of the factors pushing me. While my back was turned, the Norwegians managed to achieve the first Arctic crossing in winter. I didn't want the same to happen in the Antarctic.

As a rule, anything that is pretty you avoid when on an expedition in the polar extremes. Normally anything other than white means a hazard such as a crevasse.

I go on expeditions for the same reason an estate agent sells houses - to pay the bills.

The most important relationship in your life should be your relationship with yourself.

You have been the pillowI lay my weary soul upon

He speaks the words of a distant prophet as though He has written the words Himself.

I spend many months in apparently listless rumination out of which I hope something will emerge.

A stirring warmth flowed from her, as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words.

In joy or sorrow, feebleness or might, Peace or commotion, be thou, Father, my delight.

Instead of always asking how to get others to approve of you... learn to ask: What do I really want, the applause of the crowds or to quietly have my own life?

Works of art produced in the contemporary world are a further expression of that. But I don't think there is an active, ongoing nihilist self-consciousness in the artist.

You can lead a bureaucrat to water, but you can't make him think.

Man is the jewel of God, who has created this material world to keep his treasure in.