Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Yvon Chouinard
Age: 86
Born: 1938
Born: November 9
Businessperson
Environmentalist
Mountaineer
Rock Climber
Lewiston
Maine
Terms
Corpses
Saws
Ads
Term
Businessman
Become
Magazine
Wanted
Faced
Going
Suits
Pasty
Magazines
Pasties
Distance
Airline
More quotes by Yvon Chouinard
Once you educate yourself, you're left with choices.
Yvon Chouinard
Traveling is my form of self-education.
Yvon Chouinard
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
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
...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
The more I make the more I can give away.
Yvon Chouinard
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
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
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
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
So all of these companies that are going for the big growth, if it continues for any length of time, will outlast their resources and outlast their customers and go belly-up. And that's why these huge companies have massive layoffs all the time.
Yvon Chouinard
You climb to the summit and there is nothing there.
Yvon Chouinard
A real capitalist knows that $10 given today does a lot more good than $100 given 10 years from now.
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
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
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
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
Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person.
Yvon Chouinard
The revolution starts at the bottom.
Yvon Chouinard
