Quote

Surfing and climbing are both useless sports. You get to be conquistadors of the useless. You climb to the summit and there is nothing there. And you could hike to the top from another direction. How you get there is the important part. It's the same with surfing.

Yvon Chouinard

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Yvon Chouinard
Age: 85
Born: 1938
Born: November 9
Businessperson
Environmentalist
Mountaineer
Rock Climber
Lewiston
Maine
Adventure
Hike
Sports
Summit
Another
Surfing
Part
Climb
Nothing
Climbs
Important
Climbing
Useless
Direction
Conquistadors

More quotes by Yvon Chouinard

Image
Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
I've accepted the fact that there's a beginning and end to everything. All species are born, evolve, and then die off. We're going through the 6th great extinction and the large mammals are going first and, you know what - we're large mammals!
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Yeah, leading an examined life, I always say, is a pain in the ass. It adds an element of complexity to business that most businessmen don't want to hear about. They just want to call a fabric manufacturer, and say, Hey, give us 10,000 yards of shirting.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
We took special pride in the fact that climbing rocks and icefalls had no economic value in society...We were like a wild species living in the edges of an ecosystem - adaptable, resilient and tough.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Everything we make pollutes. The most responsible thing we can do is to make each product as well as we know how so it lasts as long as possible.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Once you educate yourself, you're left with choices.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Going back to a simpler life is not a step backwards.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Hiring people with diverse backgrounds brings in a flexibility of thought and openness to new ways of doing things, as opposed to hiring clones from business schools who have been taught a codified way of doing business.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
There's a movement for simplifying your life: purchase less stuff, own a few things that are very high quality that last a long time, and that are multifunctional.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
There's no difference between a pessimist who says, Oh it's hopeless, so don't bother doing anything. and an optimist who says, Don't bother doing anything, it's going to turn out fine anyways. Either way, nothing happens.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
The reason it was so scary was that there was only one climber capable of rescuing us, and that was Layton Kor, and he was in Colorado.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward. Rather, returning to a simpler way allows us to regain our dignity, puts us in touch with the land, and makes us value human contact again.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
The secret to happiness is to be working at your passion. If you want to be miserable, lead a desperate life like everybody else where they drag their asses to work everyday because they hate their job.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Hire extremely independent, intelligent, and passionate people, not necessarily experts. Maybe three or four of my employees have MBAs, and those guys aren't necessarily at the top of the food chain.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
I purposely try to hire people who are really self-motivated and good at what they do, and then I just leave them alone.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
At Patagonia, making a profit is not the goal because the Zen master would say profits happen 'when you do everything else right'.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
During the sixties, all the risk-type sports were very popular, because everybody was rebelling against their parents, or rebelling against the whole system. But those days are over. This is the day of conservatism.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Profit is what happens when you do everything else right.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
The solution may be for a lot of the world's problems is to turn around and take a forward step. You can't just keep trying to make a flawed system work.
Yvon Chouinard
Image
Mastery... is to work toward simplicity replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work, and skill.
Yvon Chouinard