Edward Abbey Quotes
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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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Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
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All living things on earth are kindred.
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Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.
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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.
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The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.
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Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.
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The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.
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If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world implies contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.
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Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and powerful.
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'There is no situation so bad that the cops can't make it worse.'
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Among politicians and businessman, Pragmatism is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'
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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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When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
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I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.
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We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there.
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No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
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'Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.'
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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.
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Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.
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When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
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We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
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God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.
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Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly; it's the highway that is ugly.