Edward Abbey Quotes

477 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

Edward Abbey
I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.

Edward Abbey
Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.

Edward Abbey
Come with me, the river said, close your eyes and quiet your limbs and float with me into the wonder and mystery of the canyons, see the unknown and the little known, look upon the stone gods face to face, see Medusa, drink my waters, hear my song, feel my power, come along and drift with me toward the distant, ultimate and legendary sea....

Edward Abbey
Going to bed with Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, or Margaret Thatcher: There are some things one prefers neither to do nor to have done.

Edward Abbey
My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.

Edward Abbey
Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff.

Edward Abbey
Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.

Edward Abbey
A mother's sorrow is more true, honorable, and beautiful than the detachment of the sage.

Edward Abbey
Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies.

Edward Abbey
For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself.

Edward Abbey
What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba City, Arizona, on a hot day in June?

Edward Abbey
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.

Edward Abbey
Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.

Edward Abbey
Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in the ghosts that haunt the human mind.

Edward Abbey
I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that's patrotism.

Edward Abbey
Industrialism, whether of the capitalist or socialist coloration, is the
basic tyrant of the modern age.

Edward Abbey
Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game

Edward Abbey
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

Edward Abbey
Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.

Edward Abbey
The Latino military fare badly when they stumble into war with the gringos. But in the torture, murder, and massacre of their own people, they have always performed with brilliance and elan.

Edward Abbey
Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.

Edward Abbey
Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.

Edward Abbey
Mental degeneracy may be caused by lead poisoning. Or by a poor dip in the gene pool.

Edward Abbey
The feminists have a legitimate grievance. But so does everyone else.

Edward Abbey