Edward Abbey Quotes
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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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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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In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority.
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All living things on earth are kindred.
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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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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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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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When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
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Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.
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Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.
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'There is no situation so bad that the cops can't make it worse.'
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I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.
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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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When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
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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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We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
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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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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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Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.
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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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The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.
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He recalled Dr. Sarvis' favorite apothegm: When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
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There's beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.
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'Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.'