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Maybe mountaineering shouldn't be considered heroic at all, since the whole effort is 'useless' and in no way to be compared with sitting down at the wrong lunch counter in the early-sixties South, or going into battle. Nevertheless, situations arise in the useless enterprise of mountaineering that present people with choices, that make emotional and physical demands that few can meet.
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Robert Roper (Fatal Mountaineer: The High-Altitude Life and Death of Willi Unsoeld, American Himalayan Legend)