Edward Abbey Quotes
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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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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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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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The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
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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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He recalled Dr. Sarvis' favorite apothegm: When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
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Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism.
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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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Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.
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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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Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
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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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With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams.
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In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority.
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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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The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.
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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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Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.
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I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.
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I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.
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There's beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.
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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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God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.