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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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Surfing And Climbing Are

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.

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Mastery... Is To Work Toward Simplicity; Replace Complex Technology With Knowledge, Hard Work, And Skill.

It's Okay To Be Eccentric If You're Rich; Otherwise You're Just Crazy.

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Traveling Is My Form Of Self-education.

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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.

You Climb To The Summit And There Is Nothing There.

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.

There Is A Beginning And End To All Life - And To All Human Endeavors. Species Evolve And Die Off. Empires Rise, Then Break Apart. Businesses Grow, Then Fold. There Are No Exceptions. I'm Ok With All That. Yet It Pains Me To Bear Witness To The Sixth Great Extinction, Where We Humans Are Directly Responsible For The Extirpation Of So Many Wonderful Creatures And Invaluable Indigenous Cultures. It Saddens Me To Observe The Plight Of Our Own Species; We Appear To Be Incapable Of Solving Our Problems.

We Grow By Letting The Customer Tell Us. So When The Customer Tells Us That They're Frustrated, That They Just Got Their Catalogue And We're Already Out Of A Product They Wanted, Then It Tells Me That We're Not Making Enough. We Let The Customer Tell Us Instead Of Creating An Artificial Demand For Our Products. Any Time You're Making Products That People Don't Need, You're At The Mercy Of The Economy, You're At The Mercy Of Whatever Is Going On. So We Tried To Avoid That Situation.

Climbing For Speed Records Will Probably Become More Popular, A Mania Which Has Just Begun. Climbers Climb Not Just To See How Fast And Efficiently They Can Do It, But Far Worse, To See How Much Faster And More Efficiently They Are Than A Party Which Did The Same Climb A Few Days Before. The Climb Becomes Secondary, No More Important Than A Racetrack. Man Is Pitted Against Man.

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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.

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.

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.

Doing Risk Sports Had Taught Me Another Important Lesson: Never Exceed Your Limits. You Push The Envelope And You Live For Those Moments When You’re Right On The Edge, But You Don’t Go Over. You Have To Be True To Yourself; You Have To Know Your Strengths And Limitations And Live Within Your Means. The Same Is True For A Business. The Sooner A Company Tries To Be What It Is Not, The Sooner It Tries To ‘have It All,’ The Sooner It Will Die.

You Ask Me About The Past, You Ask Me About The Future, The Only Way To Be Happy Is To Be Living Right Now.

How You Climb A Mountain Is More Important Than Reaching The Top

Just Why Is Yosemite Climbing So Different ? Why Does It Have Techniques, Ethics And Equipment All Of Its Own ? The Basic Reason Lies In The Rock Itself. Nowhere Else In The World Is The Rock So Exfoliated, So Glacier-polished And So Devoid Of Handholds. All Of The Climbing Lines Follow Vertical Crack Systems. Every Piton Crack, Every Handhold Is A Vertical One. Special Techniques And Equipment Have Evolved Through Absolute Necessity.

The More You Know, The Less You Need.

I Purposely Try To Hire People Who Are Really Self-motivated And Good At What They Do, And Then I Just Leave Them Alone.

I Believe The Accepted Model Of Capitalism That Demands Endless Growth Deserves The Blame For The Destruction Of Nature, And It Should Be Displaced. Failing That, I Try To Work With Those Companies And Help Them Change The Way They Think About Our Resources.

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.

...there's No Such Thing As Sustainability. There Are Just Levels Of It. It's A Process, Not A Real Goal. All You Can Do Is Work Toward It. There's No Such Thing As Any Sustainable Economy. The Only Thing I Know That's Even Close To Sustainable Economic Activity Would Be Organic Farming On A Very Small Scale Or Hunting And Gathering On A Very Small Scale. And Manufacturing, You End Up With Way More Waste Than You End Up With Finished Product. It's Totally Unsustainable. It's Just The Way It Is.

Most Of The Damage We Cause To The Planet Is The Result Of Our Own Ignorance.

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