The rules of the game must be constantly updated to keep up with the expanding technology. Otherwise we overkill the classic climbs and delude ourselves into thinking we are better climbers than the pioneers.
The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong – that’s when adventure starts.
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.
A real capitalist knows that $10 given today does a lot more good than $100 given 10 years from now.
The revolution starts at the bottom.
It’s okay to be eccentric if you’re rich; otherwise you’re just crazy.
Most of the damage we cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance.
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.
Remember: if you take bivouac equipment along, you will bivouac...
We choose to believe that the granite is alive. If life is movement, then rock – with its atoms flying around like stars in cosmos – is alive.
You have a whole life in the outdoors, you realize you have a sense of responsibility to protect these wild places.
The climbing as a whole is not very esthetic or enjoyable; it is merely difficult.
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.
Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.
Mainly, my job is to be on the outside and bring ideas into the company and forge change. Most people hate change – it’s threatening. I thrive on it.
True adventure begins when everything goes wrong.
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.
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.
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.
I purposely try to hire people who are really self-motivated and good at what they do, and then I just leave them alone.