Yvon Chouinard Quotes

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

In my life, what I want and what I need are exactly the same. Anything in excess of needs is burdensome to me. You couldn't give me anything I don't need. I am penniless, but have difficulty remaining so. Several of my well meaning, well-to-do friends have offered me large sums of money, which I of course refused.

The time will come when mankind will begin to get away from the consciousness of needing so many material things. More security and peace will be found in the simple life.

The magic of living life for me is, and always has been, the magic of living on the land, not in the magic of money.

We have allowed ourselves to be defined by our consumption instead of by our ability to move beyond it.

He has the most who is most content with the least.

We all want to just want to live a simple life, but nobody really knows how to do that.

My worry is that the world is becoming more chaotic every day. My excitement is that more people paying attention to 'Less but better' could help solve our growing problems.

Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.

What a lot of things there are a man can do without.

A human being needs only a small plot of ground on which to be happy, and even less to lie beneath.

To what end do I lead a simple life at all, pray? That I may teach others to simplify their lives? - and so all our lives be simplified merely, like an algebraic formula? Or not, rather, that I may make use of the ground I have cleared to live more worthily and profitably?

The more we simplify our material needs the more we are free to think of other things.

Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.

It's better to have fewer things of quality than too much expendable junk.

The end of consumerism and accumulation is the beginning of the joy of living.

The greatest part of what we say and do is really unnecessary. If a man takes this to heart, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness.

There is a joy in going without things, a fine tang in eliminating the superfluous.

To have little is to possess.

World will suffice for me in the future.

The spiritual discipline of simplicity is not a lost dream, but a recurrent version throughout history. It can be recaptured today. It must be.

How great, my friends, is the virtue of living upon a little!

Less is more only when more is too much.

The world has not yet learned the riches of frugality.

The more technique there is, the less there is