Edward Abbey Quotes
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The 'Terror' of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.
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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
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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.
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'Don't let yourself become cynical. Cynicism is a cheap emotion, a craven substitute for thought and action. Cynicism corrodes the will, dulls the conscience, blunts your sense of right and wrong... Stay alert to fine distinctions: become a pessimist like me.'
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Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers - obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.
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A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
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'The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for - for what? Someday we'll know.'
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Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.
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The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.
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Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
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Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper.
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I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.
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My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.
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Come on in. The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone - and to no one.
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Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything.
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Love flowers best in openness and freedom.
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If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a Juniper tree or the wings of a vulture-that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves.
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Freedom begins between the ears.
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'What do we know? What do we really know? He licks his dried cracked lips. We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foreknowledge of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement. I challenge that statement. With what? I don't know.'
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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.
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An empty man is full of himself.
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The longest journey begins with a single step, not with the turn of an ignition key. That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t much matter whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started.
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To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
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'A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.'