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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: 86
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

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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
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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
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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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The climbing as a whole is not very esthetic or enjoyable it is merely difficult.
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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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
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Everything we personally own that’s made, sold, shipped, stored, cleaned, and ultimately thrown away does some environmental harm every step of the way, harm that we’re either directly responsible for or is done on our behalf.
Yvon Chouinard
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You have a whole life in the outdoors, you realize you have a sense of responsibility to protect these wild places.
Yvon Chouinard
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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
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You climb to the summit and there is nothing there.
Yvon Chouinard
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Nature doesn't like empires. It doesn't like accumulation in one place, it doesn't like monoculture. It's always trying to make diverse species. It wants to spread everything out. And we're constantly trying to hold everything in.
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
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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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We're not citizens anymore. We're consumers. That's what we're called. It's just like being an alcoholic and being in denial that you're an alcoholic. We're in denial that each and every one of us is the problem. And until we face up to that, nothing's going to happen.
Yvon Chouinard
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Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward.
Yvon Chouinard
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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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Once you educate yourself, you're left with choices.
Yvon Chouinard
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No young kid growing up dreams of someday becoming a businessman. He wants to be a fireman, a sponsored athlete or a forest ranger The Lee Iacoccas, Donald Trumps, and Jack Welchs of the business world are heroes to no one except other businessmen with similar values.
Yvon Chouinard
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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
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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