I think the really good mountaineer is the man with the technical ability of the professional and with the enthusiasm and freshness of approach of the amateur.

It's not a real adventure when you have to pay for it.

My mother was a schoolteacher and very keen that I go to a city school, so although it was fairly impoverished times, I traveled every day to the Auckland Grammar School.

There is something about building up a comradeship - that I still believe is the greatest of all feats - and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It's the intense effort, the giving of everything you've got. It's really a very pleasant sensation.

During the summer of 2009, the debate on health care reform was emotional and intense. At its best, it represented the free exchange of ideas that makes this country great. At its worst, it generated death threats and acts of violence.

If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas.

The death of what's dead is the birth of what's living.

I love myself. Anything that has my name I'm tickled to death.