Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman--Including 10 More Years of Business Unusual

It applies more to “discovering” a new fabric or a new process. Again, the key word is discovering instead of inventing. There’s simply no time for inventing.

cause to the planet is the result of our own ignorance and that we cannot afford to go about blindly doing unnecessary damage simply because we lack curiosity. Uncovering problems—and ultimately finding solutions—requires not only allowing facts to influence your faith but also requires asking lots of questions, hard questions. I’ve found that aski

Malinda and I pay for our own lunches in our cafeteria; otherwise, it would send a message to the employees that it’s okay to take from the company.

I believe the way toward mastery of any endeavor is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge. The more you know, the less you need.

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 and degree of specialization that doesn’t appeal to me. Once I reach that 80 percent level I like to go off and do something totally different; th

It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship’s keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of the human breast or shoulder, there must be experimentation of several generations of craftsmen.

The first Chouinard carabiners were entirely machined on a Sears & Roebuck drill press.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “In pleasant peace and security, how quickly the soul in a man begins to die.”

“He not busy being born is busy dying.”

“Make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”