Top 60 Dean Potter Quotes

In ‘The Prophet,’ Kahlil Gibran says something about perfection only being reached by stripping something to the point of nakedness. That’s the ultimate project: the naked climber doing the greatest climb.

When you do things that are different and extreme, some people like it and some people don’t. I don’t really care if I am liked or not liked.

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

I grew up in the 1970s. It was a super open-minded time. I was taught through my parents and TV that everything was possible. You’d see cartoons where superheroes would fly. I always wanted to do these things.

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

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.

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.

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 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 tried to be the leader. All I focus on is climbing.

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.

The deaths of such skilled fliers like my very good friend Sean Leary make me see that if there’s ever a question of safety, it’s always better to wait or walk down.

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.

I’ve never had a close call.

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

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

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.

Free soloing is just the most natural way man can climb. It’s just using your hands and feet without any use of protection or rope to ascend.

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 there’s a death consequence, when you are doing things that if you mess up you die, I like the way it causes my senses to peak. I can see more clearly. You can think much faster. You hear at a different level.

I’ve never had a serious injury.

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.

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

The wingsuit is basically the flying squirrel suit.

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 attractive thing about rock climbing: There are no rules.

The wilderness is infinite in what it offers.

My whole life I’ve always innovated the gear to match my pursuits. I’ve innovated the best climbing gear, the best slacklining gear, and definitely the most advanced BASE jumping gear.

I would never make a movie just for the sake of making a movie.

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

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’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.

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?

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.

‘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.

I’m so in tune with rocks and nature. On any rock around the world, if I hurt the rock, I feel like I’m hurting myself.

I’ve just always been terrified of having to speak in front of people. When I used to go in school and then I had to do a report in front of the class and speak, I would freeze up, sometimes I would even like tear up almost and start crying and stuff… couldn’t deal.

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 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.

Wing-suit flying can be safe if you are highly practiced and skilled and follow the fundamental rules of questioning yourself and waiting or walking down when something doesn’t seem ‘right.’

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.’

I want to fly for the rest of a very long life.

I practice the art of no rules.

I know I’m not a cutting-edge free climber. Free soloing, I’m comfortable to 5.10-plus or 5.11a. But if I was a grade higher I could do some amazing things.

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

I don’t have a lot of pressure on myself to be successful.

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

People think that in order for nature to be sacred, you have to separate yourself from it.

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.

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

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 can calm myself by an intense will, and also by the simple ability to focus in the most dangerous situation on breath and nothing else.

I had trouble focusing as a child and I still sort of do, but when you climb and you’re going to die if you fall, you have 100 percent focus. That’s a rarity in life and a gift to have something that brings you that clarity.

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.

In most every other country, ‘body flying’ more commonly known as BASE jumping is legal and looked upon as a beautiful art. Here in the United States, those of us who pursue human flight are treated as criminals and are forced to travel abroad to seek one of man’s most fundamental desires, to fly free.

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.

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

I love the idea that I can change the worst possible thing to the best possible thing: dying to flying.

The knowledge that in a split second that I could be dead almost overwhelms me. But it is through constant exposure to that fear that keeps me alive and lets me do what I love.

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.