Edward Abbey Quotes
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I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
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There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.
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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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What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.
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Freedom begins between the ears.
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The plow has probably done more harm - in the long run - than the sword.
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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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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.
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What's more American than violence?' Hayduke wanted to know. 'Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.
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I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the elms of Central Park, a Morgan police horse screaming in its jaws. We can never have enough of nature.
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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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Among politicians and businessman, Pragmatism is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'
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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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Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death. Loving our mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve all enigmas in contingent bliss.
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All living things on earth are kindred.
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I am not an atheist but an earthiest.
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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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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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'There is no situation so bad that the cops can't make it worse.'
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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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Concerning river runners: If we were going into war again I can't think of any I'd rather have on our side. I mean, all of these good men and women. And if they were on the other side I'd join the other side.