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It is easy when you are young to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough it is your God-given right to have it... I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong in my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing...I came to appreciate that mountains make poor recepticles for dreams.

It is easy when you are young to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough it is your God-given right to have it... I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong in my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing...I came to appreciate that mountains make poor recepticles for dreams.

Approximate author period: c. 1990 AD · modern

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Jon Krakauer
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1990 AD · modern
Approximate author-period evidence for Jon Krakauer: documented activity in 1990. Wikidata Q368337, inspected 2026-10-08. Not a quotation composition date or independent verification of attribution. Source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q368337 (accessed 2026-10-08).
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
Contributor-provided quotation collection

Supplied reference C; CSV row 78990; supplied attribution, independently unverified

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