Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

I’m for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

Put your leaders in stressful scenarios. Make them figure out solutions under pressure. See if you can make them frustrated, angry, and flustered, and then demand decisive leadership from them. They will be challenged at first, but they will get better over time.

The traveller has reached the end of the journey!

You’re president, if you conclude my judgment is not the right judgment, I abide by that, but I want an opportunity to have an input.

The way to develop decisiveness is to start right where you are, with the very next question you face.

Locally, I’ll vote one way and nationally, maybe another.

If you are part of a religion that very strongly insists that you believe then to decide not to do that is quite a big hurdle to jump over. You never forget the thought process you went through. It becomes part of your whole intellectual picture.

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

I give opinions, not advice.

When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

Adventure is not outside man; it is within.

Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country’s scared.

The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.

If you are ever in doubt as to whether to kiss a pretty girl, always give her the benefit of the doubt.

If an idea isn’t exciting, you shouldn’t do it.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you’ve got people just streaming up the mountain – well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

I have considered voting Conservative because I am so against the Labour party.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

I’m someone who likes plowing new ground, then walking away from it. I get bored easily. For me, the big thrill comes with the discovering.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

We need an adult in the White House. When making life-or-death, war-or-peace decisions, a president can’t just pop off or lash out irrationally.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.

Remember, no one decides who they’re going to vote for based on the vice president. I mean that literally.

When I was running training, we would fire a couple of leaders from every SEAL team because they couldn’t lead. And 99.9% of the time, it wasn’t a question of their ability – it was a question of their ability to listen.

Never allow a person to tell you no who doesn’t have the power to say yes.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

I think one of the basic reasons men make good friends is that they can make up their minds quickly.

In all my wild mountaineering, I have enjoyed only one avalanche ride; and the start was so sudden, and the end came so soon, I thought but little of the danger that goes with this sort of travel, though one thinks fast at such times.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore, and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

I think my first thought on reaching the summit- of course, I was very, very pleased to be there, naturally – but my first thought was one of a little bit of surprise. I was a little bit surprised that here I was, Ed Hillary, on top of Mt. Everest. After all, this is the ambition of most mountaineers.

New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

We misjudge risk if we feel we have some control over it, even if it’s an illusory sense of control.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

Ultimately this issue is on us. We’re the ones who make the decisions about what our kids eat.

I only change things where I know about a situation. I’d never change just for change.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

With Benghazi, I don’t see anyone saying, ‚Hey look, I am overall responsible for this and therefore, I take responsibility for what happened. It’s my fault.‘ I haven’t heard that yet. Meanwhile, the other side of the coin, the Osama bin Laden raid, it seems everyone made that decision, and that’s just unbelievable to me.

If you had your life to live over again, do it overseas.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

If we could just find out who’s in charge, we could kill him.

Nobody climbs mountains for scientific reasons. Science is used to raise money for the expeditions, but you really climb for the hell of it.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one’s self to destiny.

Being prime minister is a lonely job… you cannot lead from the crowd.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.