Yvon Chouinard Quotes

“It's not an adventure until something goes wrong.”

“True adventure begins when everything goes wrong.”

“The hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life; it's so easy to make it complex.”

“Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all.”

“How you climb a mountain is more important than reaching the top.”

“I have a little different definition of evil than most people — When you have the opportunity and the ability to do good and you do nothing, that's evil. Evil doesn't always have to be an overt act, it can be merely the absence of good.”

“The more you know, the less you need.”

“Real adventure is defined best as a journey from which you may not come back alive, and certainly not as the same person.”

“Going back to a simpler life based on living by sufficiency rather than excess is not a step backward.”

“To do good, you actually have to do something.”

“You have a whole life in the outdoors, you realize you have a sense of responsibility to protect these wild places.”

“The word 'adventure' has just gotten overused. For me, adventure is when everything goes wrong—that's when the adventure starts.”

“I had always avoided thinking of myself as a businessman. I was a climber, a surfer, a kayaker, a skier, and a blacksmith.”

“The capitalist ideal is you grow a company and focus on making it as profitable as possible. Then, when you cash out, you become a philanthropist. We believe a company has a responsibility to do that all along—for the sake of the employees, for the sake of the planet.”

“After you're making enough money to support yourself, what's the reason to stay in business? Is it a responsibility for the employees that are still there to make more money or to do something good? It's not an ego thing. I'll be dead in a few years anyway.”

“I've been a businessman for almost sixty years. It's as difficult for me to say those words as it is for someone to admit being an alcoholic or a lawyer. I've never respected the profession.”

“Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we'll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.”

“The process is more important than the goal.”

“Tell you the secret to a good life: always be the oldest one in the room.”

“One of my favorite things about entrepreneurship is, if you want to understand the entrepreneur, study the juvenile delinquent. The delinquent is saying with his actions, 'this sucks, I'm going to go do my own thing.'”