The Most Epic Quotes About Surfing

There is nothing like good, inspiring quotes about surfing to whet your appetite and get you itching to get back on the water. We’ve tried to round up some of the absolute best ones for you here.

Enjoy!

The Most Epic Quotes About Surfing

“Surfing is such an amazing concept. You’re taking on Nature with a little stick and saying, ‘I’m gonna ride you!’ And a lot of times Nature says, ‘No you’re not!’ and crashes you to the bottom.”
– Jolene Blalock

“It’s a culmination of your life of surfing when you turn and paddle in at Mavericks.”
– Jeff Clark

“I could not help concluding this man had the most supreme pleasure while he was driven so fast and so smoothly by the sea.”
– Captain James Cook

“Thank God for a few free waves.”
– Miki Dora

“I surf to get tan.”
– Shane Dorian

“It’s not tragic to die doing something you love.”
– Mark Foo

“One of the greatest things about the sport of surfing is that you need only three things: your body, a surfboard, and a wave.”
– Naima Green

“My passion for surfing was more than my fear of sharks.”
– Bethany Hamilton

“I like to tell people who never surf that surfing is like taking a shower, except it lasts a lifetime. We are the lucky few who get to play in God’s soup and we are better humans because of it.”
– Bill Hamilton

“Sliding a wave removes our brains out of the ordinary and slips us into the extra ordinary of being there now. No more worries about mortgages or strife of being poor or rich. When you enter the domain of an ocean cylinder, that moment, those split seconds belong to the Zen part of just being. Period.”
– Bill Hamilton

“For those searching for something more than just the norm. We lay it all down, including what others call sanity, for just a few moments on waves larger than life. We do this because we know there is still something greater than all of us. Something that inspires us spiritually. We start going downhill, when we stop taking risks.”
– Laird Hamilton

“We’re all equal before a wave.”
– Laird Hamilton

“Surfing’s one of the few sports that you look ahead to see what’s behind.”
– Laird Hamilton

“The biggest sin in the world would be if I lost my love for the ocean.”
– Laird Hamilton

“Wiping out is an underappreciated skill.”
– Laird Hamilton

“If you’re having a bad day, catch a wave.”
– Frosty Hesson

“I try changing my surfing, which is the absolute worst thing you can do. Everyone surfs their own way. If I try to surf like someone else I look like a dork.”
– Andy Irons

“Surfing is for life.”
– Bruce Jenkins

“As for my own surfing, let’s just say that when the waves start pushing 10 feet, I get this tremendous urge to make a sandwich.”
– Bruce Jenkins

“You cannot stop the waves, but you can learn to surf”
– Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Out of water, I am nothing”
– Duke Kahanamoku

“I took off on a wave, went down the side, popped out the other end, and went, shit, I’m still alive!”
– Greg Noll surfing Waimea Bay, Hawaii

“Surfing is attitude dancing.”
– Gerry Lopez

“If there was no such thing as barrels I probably wouldn’t even surf.”
– Clay Marzo

“Surfing is the most blissful experience you can have on this planet, a taste of heaven.”
– John McCarthy

“Sometimes in the morning, when it’s a good surf, I go out there, and I don’t feel like it’s a bad world.”
– Kary Mullis

“There is not one right way to ride a wave.”
– Jamie O’Brien

“I’m just a surfer who wanted to build something that would allow me to surf longer.”
– Jack O’Neill

“Style is a natural extension of who you are as a person.”
– Mark Richards

“I think you could build a couple of humans with the amount of skin lost on the reef at Pipe.”
– Martin Potter

“One drop in is an accident, two is rude, three is a twatable offence.”
– Roger Sharp

“There are no more committed people on the planet than surfers. We fall down a lot. We turn around, paddle back out, and do it over and over again. Unlike anything else in life, the stoke of surfing is so high that the failures quickly fade from memory.”
– Gary Sirota

“Not to sound too deep or weird, but I think that the times when you really appreciate surfing are the times you’re really sort of becoming one with nature. Surfing’s as raw of a sport as it gets.”
– Kelly Slater

“The joy of surfing is so many things combined, from the physical exertion of it, to the challenge of it, to the mental side of the sport.”
– Kelly Slater

“Well I’m always working on constantly everything. I never take the approach that I’m doing as well as I possibly can… I always think there’s more and I think if you don’t have that, you are not driven to be better.”
– Kelly Slater

“It’s all about where your mind’s at.”
– Kelly Slater

“It’s like the mafia. Once you’re in, you’re in. There’s no getting out.
– Kelly Slater

“Your surfing can get better on every turn, on every wave you catch. Learn to read the ocean better. A big part of my success has been wave knowledge.”
– Kelly Slater

“I think when a surfer becomes a surfer, it’s almost like an obligation to be an environmentalist at the same time.”
– Kelly Slater

“Surfing is very much like making love. It always feels good, no matter how many times you’ve done it.”
– Paul Strauch

“The only one whom can whisper to you the ways of the surf, is the wind”
– Wilhelm Sverdvik

“When the surfs up, your life is too”
– Wilhelm Sverdvik

“There’s nothing quite like surfing by yourself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but unpredictable weather patterns, below deck accommodation, sea snakes, coral cuts and packs of reef sharks make it a trip for the committed seadog.”
– Mark Thornley

“Waves are not measured in feet and inches, they are measured in increments of fear.”
– Buzzy Trent

“The best surfer out there is the one having the most fun”
– Unknown

“There is nothing, nothing, more sad than a surfer who used to surf.”
– Unknown

“If it swells, ride it!”
– Unknown

“Surfing soothes me, it’s always been a kind of Zen experience for me. The ocean is so magnificent, peaceful, and awesome. The rest of the world disappears for me when I’m on a wave. ”
– Paul Walker

“Surfing, alone among sports, generates laughter at its very suggestion, and this is because it turns not a skill into an art, but an inexplicable and useless urge into a vital way of life.”
– Matt Warshaw

“If in doubt, paddle out.”
– Nat Young