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The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life it’s so easy to make it complex.
Yvon Chouinard
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Yvon Chouinard
Age: 85
Born: 1938
Born: November 9
Businessperson
Environmentalist
Mountaineer
Rock Climber
Lewiston
Maine
World
Simplify
Complexes
Complex
Hardest
Easy
Thing
Make
Life
More quotes by Yvon Chouinard
One thing I did not want to change, even if we got serious, work had to be enjoyable on a daily basis. We all had to come to work on the balls of our feet and go up the stairs two at a time.
Yvon Chouinard
We choose to believe that the granite is alive. If life is movement, then rock - with its atoms flying around like stars in cosmos - is alive.
Yvon Chouinard
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
Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all.
Yvon Chouinard
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
Mainly, my job is to be on the outside and bring ideas into the company and forge change. Most people hate change—it’s threatening. I thrive on it.
Yvon Chouinard
You ask me about the past, you ask me about the future, the only way to be happy is to be living right now.
Yvon Chouinard
Once you educate yourself, you're left with choices.
Yvon Chouinard
I never wanted to be a businessman I was a craftsman and good at working with my hands. At some point, I decided that this company is my best resource. Patagonia now exists to put into practice all the things that smart people are saying we have to do not only to save the planet but to save the economy.
Yvon Chouinard
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
The more you know, the less you need.
Yvon Chouinard
...it's the same with business. If you focus on the goal and not the process, you inevitably compromise. Businessmen who focus on profits wind up in the hole. For me, profit is what happens when you do everything else right.
Yvon Chouinard
Mastery... is to work toward simplicity replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work, and skill.
Yvon Chouinard
The more I make the more I can give away.
Yvon Chouinard
Traveling is my form of self-education.
Yvon Chouinard
Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward.
Yvon Chouinard
I think risk is important. I don't care if it's a great financial risk or a physical risk. You only get out of something what you put into it and the fact that you are willing to risk something means that you are going to get a lot more out of it.
Yvon Chouinard
We're a part of nature. As we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves. It's a selfish thing to want to protect nature.
Yvon Chouinard
If you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, ‘This sucks, I’m going to do my own thing.’
Yvon Chouinard
Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months.
Yvon Chouinard