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.

Most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.

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.

Remember: if you take bivouac equipment along, you will bivouac.

Traveling is my form of self-education.

The whole purpose of climbing something like Everest is to effect some sort of spiritual and physical gain. But if you compromise the process you’re an asshole when you start out and an asshole when you get back.

I've always thought of myself as an 80 percenter. I like to throw myself passionately into a sport or activity until I reach about an 80 percent proficiency level. To go beyond that requires an obsession that doesn't appeal to me. Once I reach 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; that probably explains the diversity of the Patagonia product like - and why our versatile, multifaceted clothes are the most successful.