Echoes

What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, honorable, compassionate.

I believe people work for satisfaction.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

It's kind of fun to do the impossible.

I don't know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles. But there's no doubt, either, that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics. That has given me more satisfaction than a footprint on a mountain.

Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we've done something wonderful... that's what matters to me.

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement and success have no meaning.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it is possible for man to go.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written, in writing what deserves to be read, and in so living as to make the world happier for our living in it.

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.

Don't do anything that someone else can do. Don't undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.