Edward Abbey Quotes

I would like to evoke the sense of wonder and magic in the reader but without invoking the mystical, the supernatural or the transcendent.

We should restore the practice of dueling. It might improve manners around here.

All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.

Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.

The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live.

Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.

There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.

Life is already too short to waste on speed.

I am an enemy of the State. But isn't everyone?

All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.

Only a fool is astonished by the foolishness of mankind.

I'm in favor of animal liberation. Why? Because I'm an animal.

Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.

Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking; namely, life.

A critic is to an author as a fungus to an oak.

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.

There is a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in a life of complete failure.

There's nothing so obscene and depressing as an American Christmas.

A city man is a home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die.

I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.

As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.

Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.

Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties.

No man is wise enough to be another man's master. Each man's as good as the next -- if not a damn sight better.

God is love? Not bloody likely.

Paradise for a happy man lies in his own good nature.

Is the Archbishop's blessing any more meaningful than the Politician's handshake? The come, they go, with bigger things than us on their minds.

What good is a Bill of Rights that does not include the right to play, to wander, to explore, the right to stillness and solitude, to discovery and physical freedom?

Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God bless America, the Earth upon which we stand.

The hawk's cry is as sharp as its beak.

Life is unfair. And it's not fair that life is unfair.

I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.

I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man.

All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?

As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases.

Put the park rangers to work. Lazy scheming loafers, they've wasted too many years selling tickets at toll booths and sitting behind desks filling out charts and tables

Not all questions can be answered.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.

What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

In the modern technoindustrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood.

What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba City, Arizona, on a hot day in June?

The ever-rising cost of living: Someday soon, the corporate technicians will be locking meters on our noses and charging us a royalty on the air we breathe.