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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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Yvon Chouinard
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: November 9
Businessperson
Environmentalist
Mountaineer
Rock Climber
Lewiston
Maine
Either
Thrown
Away
Personally
Doe
Ultimately
Shipped
Everything
Environmental
Cleaned
Done
Harm
Stored
Made
Responsible
Behalf
Every
Step
Sold
Way
Steps
Directly

More quotes by Yvon Chouinard

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You have to remember this was the '60s, when climbing was dangerous and sex was safe.
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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.
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It's not an adventure until something goes wrong.
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Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.
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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.
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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'.
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Going back to a simpler life is not a step backwards.
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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Is climbing, as a passion and as a sport, better off now than it was in the past? We can do harder climbs now in faster times - techniques are more refined and equipement more sophisticated - but are we really any better off?
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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The climbing as a whole is not very esthetic or enjoyable it is merely difficult.
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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...it's always been difficult for us to lead an examined life as a corporation. I've always felt like a company has the responsibility to not wait for the government to tell it what to do, or to wait for the consumer to tell it what to do, but as soon as it finds out it's doing something wrong, stop doing it.
Yvon Chouinard
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I say the last 10 percent of the way to perfection takes so much of your life that it isn't worth the effort. This overzealous attitude is what creates religious fanatics, body Nazis, and athletes who are exceedingly dull to converse with.
Yvon Chouinard
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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To do good, you actually have to do something.
Yvon Chouinard