I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes finding fulfillment in creating lasting contributions to society rather than just personal achievements.
In this quote, Edmund Hillary reflects on his remarkable achievements in exploration, such as climbing Everest and visiting the poles. However, he places greater value on his philanthropic efforts, particularly the establishment of schools and medical clinics, highlighting that true satisfaction comes from making a positive impact on others' lives and contributing to their well-being and education.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of community service.
I think I mainly climb mountains because I get a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I never attempt to analyze these things too thoroughly, but I think that all mountaineers do get a great deal of satisfaction out of overcoming some challenge which they think is very difficult for them, or which perhaps may be a little dangerous.
Despite all I have seen and experiences, I still get the same thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb toward it.
I've always hated the danger part of climbing, and it's great to come down again because it's safe.
Even when you're 50, you can make the effort to improve your standards.
Many people have been getting too casual about climbing Everest. I forecast a disaster many times.
I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.
The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.
I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the world, considering us as a civilized and a Christian country, that we deny the advantages of learning to women.
In Britain, we need to start presenting the option of being a writer in front of black women. We need to present the idea of being a writer into poorer communities because the majority of black people in this country are working class. We need to let working-class people know that their voices are important.
He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.
If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?
Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.
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