Edward Abbey Quotes
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'A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.'
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There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.
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Freedom begins between the ears.
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I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. (Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!)
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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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The plow has probably done more harm - in the long run - than the sword.
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Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.
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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.
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When I write 'paradise' I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.
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What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.
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A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
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The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
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All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.
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Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
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Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
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From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.
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The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
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I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.
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With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams.
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Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism.
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Among politicians and businessman, Pragmatism is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'
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I am not an atheist but an earthiest.
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One wishes to go on. On this great river one could glide forever - and here we discover the definition of bliss, salvation, Heaven, all the old Mediterranean dreams: a journey from wonder to wonder, drifting through eternity into ever-deeper, always changing grandeur, through beauty continually surpassing itself: the ultimate Homeric voyage.
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What's more American than violence?' Hayduke wanted to know. 'Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.