Top 60 Dean Potter Quotes

This concept of turning dying into flying is a metaphor for my basic life principle.

I know it’s kind of a strange thing I’m talking about, but another part of me truly believes I can fly, like somehow my mind can figure it out.

I’ve never tried to be the leader. All I focus on is climbing.

Thirty guys equals five percent die-off among active wingsuit base jumpers. That means there’s a flaw in our system and you’re an idiot if you think anything else. I’m smart enough to know that five percent means it could be me.

Climbing for me is about being free. It’s just to move and be uninhibited and feel and tap into the connection with nature.

I think everybody has a dream of flying at least once in their life. For me, it’s been over and over a recurring dream.

Doing things with serious consequences, whether it’s death or seriously mangling myself, puts me in a hyper-aware state, and has become somewhat of an addiction for me.

The attractive thing about rock climbing: There are no rules.

With my height in high school, I was really thinking basketball. But I guess I wasn’t that good, because my sophomore year I didn’t make the team. That was a really brutal moment for me.

When I think about doing something, I think: Will I survive a million out of a million times?

I’ve made the safest slack line ever using Vectran. It’s the strongest flexible fabric in the world.

I got a lot of inspiration and encouragement from my friend and ultra-runner Scott Jurek.

My fear is with the onset of mainstream interest in extreme sports that diversity will be subdued and eventually snubbed out within our great outdoor community. Shouldn’t we question when the leaders of our community try to manipulate our culture into a mono crop?

My feet look like hooves-like, fake-leather bottoms and funky toenails – and I scrub them with a big stiff-bristled nylon brush you’d use for scrubbing the side of your house.

Whatever I do, I long to be untethered and free.

I want to live to be a grandfather, or to be doing this when I’m 80.

I also know for a fact of at least two other ascents of the Delicate Arch. But when ‘Outside’ did their research, the other two climbers wouldn’t admit to it, and I admit to it because I don’t see anything wrong with a man climbing a rock.

I’ve never had a close call.

When I do stuff where death could be a real consequence, it makes me want to live right.

‘The Man Who Can Fly’ captures my quest for true human flight. This pursuit of the unknown and following dreams that may or may not be attained are the most important principles we portray in the National Geographic Special.

Yosemite really brings out my creativity. It’s such a powerful place, there’s some sort of amazing energy going on that fuels me.

When I was a little boy, my first memory was a flying dream. In my dream, I flew – and I also fell. I always wondered as I got older if it was some premonition of me falling to my death.

I do yoga. I meditate, and when I’m not climbing, I focus on breathing deeply all day long.

I know I’m just as mortal as everybody else and I think about that quite a bit, but I really do feel like everyone lives with this – they’re just not aware of it.

I was having all these thoughts, not really sure what I was doing in school. And I just said, ‘I’m gonna go out and climb.’ I had this great day with a friend, bouldering and rooting each other on, and I came back thinking, ‘I don’t like the way it feels to be competitive. I don’t want to be ruled by it.’

In climbing, if you injure just one finger you can’t do it. But with slacklining as long as you can walk, you can walk the line.

Part of me says it’s kind of crazy to think you can fly your human body. Another part of me thinks all of us have had the dream that we can fly. Why not chase after it?

The decision to go into the mountains and hike with your dog, and wingsuit with the dog, can bring catastrophe. These are decisions we make because they fulfill us, but they also have danger.

If I have a combination of calm and fear, I access mental states way beyond normal consciousness. That’s why I choose to do scary things.

The wilderness is infinite in what it offers.

Well, I’m a pretty wild guy and I live pretty close to nature – I’ve often lived in caves or on the edge of cliffs or in forests – so it’s just second nature for me to tap into the movings of the weather and the world.

If you’re thousands of feet up with just a thin piece of webbing that you’re standing on, it’s really a sensation of being at one with the air.

I consider myself a rock climber but the definition of rock climbing as has changed.

I’ve never had a serious injury.

Any time I’m having difficulty, I focus on the breath, on relaxed breathing.

I started free-soloing harder and harder routes, kind of proving to myself that I could take control of this, pretty much the biggest fear I had – falling to my death.

I just love any place that I can sit in the sun and feel the warmth of the sun’s rays, and feel the connection to the planet, really tapping into how small I am and really how insignificant I am in comparison to the universe.

We call the rangers ‘the tool.’ They’re just kind of a tool of the government machine. They don’t use their own mind.

I’m not so good at sitting on the floor and meditating.

With everything that I’m doing I’m trying to become more free.

My views are not concrete. I’m open to change.

I want my health to be perfect when I’m pushing the edge.

I’ve always been somewhat of a loner. I seem to take more alone time that the average person.

When I go out there untethered, the feelings that I slip I die totally overwhelms me. I am after the feeling of total control. I’m after that in all of life, and for now that’s how I find it.

Many of my hardest climbs were done with one or both feet barefoot.

There are probably people who think I’m crazy for doing what I’m doing and they’re probably right. Compared to them, compared to the way they think and feel and are so bound by norms then I am crazy, but insane or enlightened, it’s all pretty close. I would say it’s just how you look at it.

With the highlining I’m not blocking out the fear, I’m feeling the fear and absorbing everything that’s around me, trying to calm my heart, not hyperventilate and keep it together.

My mom was a yoga teacher back in the 1960s, so I observed a lot of the practice. It’s movement of the body with awareness to the breath, which you can do with running, push-ups or walking on a piece of nylon tied between two trees.

On the highline my thoughts are simple and clear. Fundamental needs shine through the mental clutter. I focus completely on my breath, my connection with the line, and making it safely to the other side.

I’m not saying take your dog wingsuit flying. But if we can take Whisper BASE jumping or climbing, maybe you can take your dog places you didn’t consider. Just find better ways to take your dog with you. They just love to be with their people and their pack.

Most people in my life who didn’t follow their dreams weren’t happy. Their lives seem so strange.

I’m 43 years old and I’ve never been injured doing any of my arts.

I had a unique style, I didn’t care about how things were done in the past, and I just did what felt natural, ‘No Rules’ once again.

I think my dad’s dream really was just to have a good family, treat them well, to keep them together, and he did everything in his power and it just fell apart on him.

It’s going to hurt if I fall. I don’t want to deal with that, I want to prove that it can be done for a long life, until I’m an old man.

I got Whisper when she was a little puppy and I hated leaving her at home, because I would go on these six-to-eight-hour hikes – I would BASE jump every day, and I’d have to leave her behind.

I hydrate obsessively, limit processed foods, and make a conscious attempt to eat and drink pure things, organic foods. I’ve noticed that these things stay with me longer than processed foods and that I’m more consistent in my climbing and my life – there aren’t so many highs and lows.

I regret the negative press that has come with my climb of the Delicate Arch, but I think that there is a bigger picture. And I would hope that it could open the eyes of the public and the community to the bigger problem of what’s going on, which is the mismanagement of our wild lands and the national park.

I’m more proud of how many times I haven’t jumped than how many times I have jumped. Sometimes walking down, I’ve saved my life.

There are many people who parachute and many people who climb. I’m the only person who does both.