Edward Abbey - Man Quotes

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I do not believe in personal immortality; it seems so unnecessary. Show me one man who deserves to live forever.

Edward Abbey
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

Edward Abbey
In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority.

Edward Abbey
A man is not aware of his virtues (if any). Nevertheless, one hopes that they exist.

Edward Abbey
If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making.

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
From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.

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
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Sometimes misattributed to Mark Twain

Edward Abbey
In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.

Edward Abbey
Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.

Edward Abbey
For I am not a naturalist.... If a label is required say that I am one who loves unfenced country. The open range. Call me a ranger... The only higher honor I've ever heard of is to be called a man.

Edward Abbey
A man without passion would be like a body without a soul. Or even more
grotesque, like a soul without a body.

Edward Abbey
The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself — not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.

Edward Abbey
Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.

Edward Abbey
The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.

Edward Abbey
This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.

Edward Abbey
To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

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

Edward Abbey
Mr. Krutch's contribution... has been his recognition and communication of the discovery that the natural world must be treated as an equal partner. That a world entirely conquered by technology, entirely dominated by industrial processes, entirely occupied by man and machine, would be a world unfit to live in. Perhaps impossible to live in.

Edward Abbey
There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.

Edward Abbey
Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier circles....

Edward Abbey
Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco.

Edward Abbey
No man is wise enough to be another man's master. Each man's as good as the next — if not a damn sight better.

Edward Abbey
Three words remain that can yet stir the blood of man: the word 'rebellion'; the word 'revolt'; the word 'revolution'.

Edward Abbey
A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.

Edward Abbey
Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.

Edward Abbey
By the age of forty, a man is responsible for his face. And his fate.

Edward Abbey
A man without a horse is like a man without a weapon: stunted and naked.

Edward Abbey
A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

Edward Abbey