We've teamed up with some Japanese companies to, basically by 2010, make all our clothing out of recycled and recyclable fibers. And we're going to accept ownership of our products from birth to birth. So if you buy a jacket from us, or a shirt ,or a pair of pants, when you're done with it, you can give it back to us and we'll make more shirts and pants out of it.

The goal of climbing big, dangerous mountains should be to attain some sort of spiritual and personal growth, but this won't happen if you compromise away the entire process.

You have to remember this was the '60s, when climbing was dangerous and sex was safe.

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.

Hiring people with diverse backgrounds brings in a flexibility of thought and openness to new ways of doing things, as opposed to hiring clones from business schools who have been taught a codified way of doing business.

A real capitalist knows that $10 given today does a lot more good than $100 given 10 years from now.

I never wanted to be a businessman; I was a craftsman and good at working with my hands. At some point, I decided that this company is my best resource. Patagonia now exists to put into practice all the things that smart people are saying we have to do not only to save the planet but to save the economy.