posted January 11, 2008 03:29 PM              

"..surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn't believe it."

"Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.."

"A strong conservationist, he demanded that international mountaineers clean up thousands of tons of discarded oxygen bottles, food containers and other climbing debris that litter the lower slopes of Everest."

"He decried what he considered a lack of 'honest-to-God morality' in New Zealand politics in the 1960s, and he refused to backtrack when the prime minister demanded he withdraw the comments. Ordinary New Zealanders applauded his integrity."

'In 2006 he climbed into a row over the death of Everest climber David Sharp, stating it was 'horrifying' that climbers could leave a dying man after an expedition left the Briton to die high on the upper slopes.

Hillary said he would have abandoned his own pioneering 1953 climb to save another life.

'It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say 'good morning' and pass on by," he said. 'Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain.' "