Erik Weihenmayer Quotes

I have a variety of friends I climb with. But the common thing is I trust all of them. They're solid climbers, the sort of people I trust to know what they're doing.

The key is to really have tremendously high expectations and to teach kids how to be self sufficient and confident and give them the skills that they need to succeed.

I found climbing to be a very tactile sport. There's no ball that is zipping through the air ready to crack you in the head. It is just you and the rock base.

Society imposes low expectations of those who have disabilities

Maybe people, maybe the world writes things off as impossible a little too quickly, when they really aren't - when they just haven't reached out and figured out how to utilize their resources to the fullest degree or created pioneering systems in their lives.

When I went blind at 13, I realized that I wasn't going to be a good baseball or basketball player like I enjoyed before. It forced me to look beyond the obvious, to things that I could still do well.

People get trapped into thinking about just one way of doing things.

I've been lucky to have lots and lots of mentors. I think that is incredibly important in anyone's life to encourage and inspire them, let them understand that their own potential is a reality that they can strive for.

You can't always get out on the mountain, so I'll put rubber on the end of my ice tools and climb the tread wall, a rotating rock wall I have in my backyard.

People have the inner resources to become anything they want to be. Challenge just becomes the vehicle for tapping into those inner resources.

What a thrill to be able to say that you had a contribution in the life of someone - a young person, perhaps, who is trying to take a look at the possibility of their own lives and find out what they are good at and you can help steer their career.

There is a very blurry line between the things we can't do and the things that we can.

You don't just deal with adversity. You use it to propel you forward.

Climbing is actually a great sport for blind people and that carried me on to climbing bigger and bigger mountains, snowy mountains, ice faces, and developing different techniques to be able to do that.

It is exciting to kind of figure things out in yourself and then use other people to help you figure things out so you can really reach your potential.

I think that it is everyone's obligation they owe to themselves and to their lives to figure out their own way up their own mountain.

A summit is so much more than a view. I may be biased, but when people say they summit mountains for the view, I don't believe them. No one suffers the way one does on a mountain simply for a beautiful view. A summit isn't just a place on a mountain. A summit exists in our hearts and minds. It is a tiny scrap of a dream made real, indisputable proof that our lives have meaning. A summit is a symbol that with the force of our will and the power of our legs, our backs, and our two hands, we can transform our lives into whatever we choose them to be, whatever our hands are strong enough to create.