Edward Abbey Quotes

477 Sourced Quotes

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.

Edward Abbey
Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.

Edward Abbey
Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Edward Abbey
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

Edward Abbey
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

Edward Abbey
The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.

Edward Abbey
War: First day in the U.S. Army, the government placed a Bible in my left hand, a bayonet in the other.

Edward Abbey
A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.

Edward Abbey
When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.

Edward Abbey
God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.

Edward Abbey
In America, as elsewhere, the general irritability level keeps rising.

Edward Abbey
When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

Edward Abbey
All men are brothers, we like to say, half-wishing sometimes in secret it were not true. But perhaps it is true. And is the evolutionary line from protozoan to Spinoza any less certain? That also may be true. We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.

Edward Abbey
Home is where, when you have to go there, you probably shouldn't.

Edward Abbey
Reason is the newest and rarest thing in human life, the most delicate child of human history.

Edward Abbey
In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food.

Edward Abbey
Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.

Edward Abbey
The old moon, like a worn and ancient coin, is still hanging in the west when I awake.

Edward Abbey
I'm a fastidious sort of fellow, fond of watermelon and buckbrush nuts.

Edward Abbey
I, too, believe in fidelity. But how can I be true to one woman without being false to all the others?

Edward Abbey
As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.

Edward Abbey
Late in August the lure of the mountains becomes irresistible. Seared by the everlasting sunfire, I want to see running water again, embrace a pine tree, cut my initials in the bark of an aspen, get bit by a mosquito, see a mountain bluebird, find a big blue columbine, get lost in the firs, hike above timberline, sunbathe on snow and eat some ice, climb the rocks and stand in the wind at the top of the world on the peak of Tukuhnikivats.

Edward Abbey
I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.

Edward Abbey
The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live....

Edward Abbey
Every man should be his own guru; every woman her own gurette.

Edward Abbey