When I kept surfing, surfing kept me.

It's easier to die when you have lived, than it is to die when you haven't. So I say to all young people, go make memories; beautiful memories. Because when the time comes to go, you won't go alone.

Big wave surfers are human beings that have powers. They are men of enormous gentility.

Health is a presence of a superior state of wellbeing, a vigor, a vitality, a pizzazz you have to work for every single day of your life.

Death is not a stalker, always looking for us. Death is a scorekeeper tallying up how much we love life and how much we are willing to work for it. We die when we stop living.

I don't see myself as legendary. If you want a legend, talk about someone like Duke Kahanamoku.

It's easier to die when you have lived than it is to die when you haven't.

The reason he [Duke Kahanamouku] didn't like me was that I liked him too much.

There is a wisdom in the wave - high-born, beautiful - for those who would but paddle out.

The greatest thing in life is health.

I love to be called Doc.

Life is not just something that happens to us it has its lessons for us.

How people treat you is not very important but how you react to it, is very important.

Maybe there are people who are gamers who haven't seen movies I have made, or the movies I have made have made no impression on them at all.

Risk the fall to know how it feels to fly.

People keep asking how anthropology is different from sociology, and everybody gets nervous.

Every adult needs a child to teach; it’s the way adults learn.

We wish to constitute all the happiness, or, if that cannot be, the misery of the one we love.

To a contrarian like me, constant advice not to do something almost always starts me quickly down the risky, unpopular path.

Be fearless and don't be afraid of failure. There is no better way to learn than through trial-and-error.

Folklore is the boiled-down juice, or pot-likker, of human living.