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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

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Yvon Chouinard
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: November 9
Businessperson
Environmentalist
Mountaineer
Rock Climber
Lewiston
Maine
Capable
Reason
Climber
Rescuing
Climbers
Mountaineering
Colorado
Climbing
Scary

More quotes by Yvon Chouinard

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The climbing as a whole is not very esthetic or enjoyable it is merely difficult.
Yvon Chouinard
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Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. If you keep your eyes open as you travel around, you realize we are destroying this planet.
Yvon Chouinard
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The whole purpose of an adventure is to gain some spiritual or emotional insight. When you compromise the process, you compromise the gain.
Yvon Chouinard
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I live for the moment. I'm basically a Buddhist-type person. I'm just here right now, and I don't think about what's going to happen a hundred years from now. I try to concentrate on what's going on right now. But I'm really trying to run this company like it is going to be here a hundred years from now. That's what's important.
Yvon Chouinard
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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
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Traveling is my form of self-education.
Yvon Chouinard
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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
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I'm the company philosopher and the burr in the saddle. I'm the one who says we need to try harder, improve the quality of our products, become a part of the political process, help elect people who are good for the environment.
Yvon Chouinard
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Mastery... is to work toward simplicity replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work, and skill.
Yvon Chouinard
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It's okay to be eccentric if you're rich otherwise you're just crazy.
Yvon Chouinard
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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
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I wanted to distance myself from those pasty faced corpses in suits I saw in airline magazine ads. If I was going to become a businessman, I was going to do it on my own terms.
Yvon Chouinard
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The most important thing is to get the fish in quickly and leave it in the water. Forget the hero pose.
Yvon Chouinard
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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
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You climb to the summit and there is nothing there.
Yvon Chouinard
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To do good, you actually have to do something.
Yvon Chouinard
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You have to remember this was the '60s, when climbing was dangerous and sex was safe.
Yvon Chouinard
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I drive old cars, all my Patagonia clothes are years and years old, I hardly have anything new. I try to lead a very simple life. I am not a consumer of anything. And I much prefer sleeping on somebody's floor than in a motel room.
Yvon Chouinard
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Growth isn't central at all, because I'm trying to run this company as if it's going to be here a hundred years from now. And if you take where we are today and add 15% growth, like public companies need to have for their stock to stay up in value, I'd be a multi-trillion-dollar company in 40 years. Which is impossible, of course.
Yvon Chouinard
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Who are businesses really responsible to? Their customers? Shareholders? Employees? We would argue that it’s none of the above. Fundamentally, businesses are responsible to their resource base. Without a healthy environment there are no shareholders, no employees, no customers and no business.
Yvon Chouinard