Edward Abbey Quotes:

I wish to be an inspector of volcanoes. I want to study cloud formations and memorize the wind and learn by heart the habits of the ponderosa pine.

Topics: Nature, Heart, Clouds, Formation

Under the desert sun, in the dogmatic clarity, the fables of theology and the myths of classical philosophy dissolve like mist. The air is clean, the rock cuts cruelly into flesh; shatter the rock and the odor of flint rises to your nostrils, bitter and sharp. Whirlwinds dance across the salt flats, a pillar of dust by day; the thornbush breaks into flame at night. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is as it is and has no need for meaning. The desert lies beneath and soars beyond any possible human qualification. Therefore, sublime.

Topics: Lying, Philosophy, Mean, Qualifications

So I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally.

Topics: Pants, Firsts

Without courage, all other virtues are useless.

Topics: Useless, Virtue, Morose

When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.

Topics: Mean, Writing, Earthquakes, Disease And Death, Cactus

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

Topics: Beautiful, Men, Down And

Life is unfair. And it's not fair that life is unfair.

Topics: Life Is, Life Is Unfair, Unfair, Not Fair

In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.

Topics: Rocks, Affair, Lifelong, Inspirational Mountain Climbing, Climbing Mountain

Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God bless America, the Earth upon which we stand.

Topics: Real, America, Earth, God Bless America

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

source: - Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.12, University of Arizona Press

Topics: Nature, Journey, Clouds, Lonesome, Leading Causes

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

Topics: Funny, Political, Scum, Stew

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

source: - Edward Abbey, David Petersen (2003). “Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey”, p.92, Big Earth Publishing

Topics: Love, Loyalty, Spiritual, Everlasting Love, Spiritual Dimensions

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

source: - Edward Abbey (1968). “Desert Solitaire”, p.169, Simon and Schuster

Topics: Nature, Insperational, Luxury, Wildness, Human Spirit

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.18, RosettaBooks

Topics: Kings, Years, Realization, County, Commissioners

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

Topics: Inspirational, Country, Freedom, Inspirational Patriotic, Inspiring Patriotic

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.

source: - Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.147, University of Arizona Press

Topics: Inspirational, Loyalty, Nature, Great Outdoors

May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.

Topics: Dog, Rain, Eye, Lonesome, Fourteen

There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated. … To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

Topics: Distance, Interesting, Forever, Feet And Walking, Trekking

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Topics: Inspiring, Peace, Diversity, Heroes And Heroines

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

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.28, RosettaBooks

Topics: Stupid, Men, Intelligent

If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies' territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers.

Topics: People, Territory, Facts, Grizzlies, Trespassing

We can have wilderness without freedom; we can have wilderness without human life at all, but we cannot have freedom without wilderness, we cannot have freedom without leagues of open space beyond the cities, where boys and girls, men and women, can live at least part of their lives under no control but their own desires and abilities, free from any and all direct administration by their fellow men.

Topics: Girl, Boys, Men, Open Spaces

Epitaphs for a gravestone: 'Please: no hooliganism'; or 'Es prohibe se hace agua aqui'; or 'No comment'.

Topics: Gravestone, Epitaph, Please

Life is cruel? Compared to what?

Topics: Life Is

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

Topics: Wise, Wisdom, Men, Abbey Road, Anarchism

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

source: - Quoted in Reader's Digest, Jan. 1970

Topics: Inspirational, Nature, Cancer, Wildlife And Nature, Political Environment

Let us hope our weapons are never needed -but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government - and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.

Topics: Military, Gun, Rights, Bearing Arms, Armed Citizens

Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.

Topics: Baseball, Hero, Player

Life is too tragic for sadness: Let us rejoice.

Topics: Sadness, Life Is, Tragic

Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.

Topics: Solitude, Depth, Madness

Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.

Topics: Abortion, Want, Maternity, Abolition, Pro Abortion

If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.

Topics: Real, Purpose, Want

Wilderness. The word itself is music.

Topics: Wilderness

Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy.

Topics: Government, People, Broken, Representative Government

And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain.

Topics: Coffee, Evil, Giving

Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.

Topics: Hunting, Animal, Moral, Grinning, Sportsman

The purpose of love, sex, and marriage is the production and raising of children. But look about you: Most people have no business having children. They are unqualified, either genetically or culturally or both, to reproduce such sorry specimens as themselves. Of all our privileges, the license to breed is the one most grossly abused.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.44, RosettaBooks

Topics: Sex, Children, Sorry

Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital of Coconino County: any town with thirteen churches and only four bars has got an incipient social problem. That town is looking for trouble.

Topics: Church, Four, Pages, Shitheads

Freedom begins between the ears.

Topics: Freedom, Liberty, Ears

Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation.

Topics: Mean, Exercise, Doe

The greater your dreams, the more terrible your nightmares.

Topics: Dream, Nightmare, Terrible

Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.

Topics: Charity, Spontaneous, Affront, Altruism, Be Spontaneous

The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information.

Topics: Horse, Real, Warrior, Processors

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.

source: - Edward Abbey, R. Crumb (1985). “The Monkey Wrench Gang”, p.127, Dream Garden Press

Topics: Drinking, Beer, Drunk, Funny Drinking, Bars Drinking

A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.

Topics: Adventure, Men, Feet, Horseback

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

Topics: Philosophy, Political, Growth, Economic Systems

As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases.

Topics: War, Government, Insanity

Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.

Topics: Government, Liberty, Roles

I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.

source: - Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.140, University of Arizona Press

Topics: Stars, Memorable, Night

The ever-rising cost of living: Someday soon, the corporate technicians will be locking meters on our noses and charging us a royalty on the air we breathe.

Topics: Air, Cost, Rising, Cost Of Living

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

Topics: Book, Focus, Force

Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.

Topics: Philosophy, Buddhism, Common Sense, Daily Living, World Literature

Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic....So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space...

Topics: Running, Sweet, Air, Half Hearted

Truth is merely common sense, say the naive realist. Really? Then where, precisely, is the location of--a rainbow? In the air? In the eye? In between? Or somewhere else?

Topics: Eye, Air, Common Sense, Naive

Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

Topics: Thinking, Thought Provoking, Innovation, Nonconformity

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?

Topics: Cities, Clouds, June, Tubas, Hot Days

I would like to evoke the sense of wonder and magic in the reader but without invoking the mystical, the supernatural or the transcendent.

Topics: Magic, Wonder, Evoke

It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.47, RosettaBooks

Topics: World, Enough, Natural, Wildlife Conservation

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

Topics: Government, Clerks, Gadgets

Defiance is beautiful. The defiance of power, especially great or overwhelming power, exalts and glorifies the rebel.

Topics: Beautiful, Rebel, Defiance

God is love? Not bloody likely.

Topics: God Is Love, Bloody

There's nothing so obscene and depressing as an American Christmas.

Topics: Depressing, Obscene

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.

Topics: Men, Cities, Feet, Asphalt

Only the half-mad are wholly alive.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.24, RosettaBooks

Topics: Mad, Half, Alive

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

Topics: Peace, Real, War, Modern Tragedy, Modern War

Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.

Topics: Thinking, Stupidity, Kind

My own ambition, my deepest and truest ambition, is to find within myself someday, somehow, the ability to do likewise, to do NOTHING - and find it enough.

Topics: Ambition, Someday, Enough

Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.

Topics: Men, Machines, Levers, Little Man

I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man.

Topics: Men, People, And Love, Dangerous Man

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

Topics: Mean, Men, Ideal Society, Coerce

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

Topics: Power, Dangerous, Worst, Power Corruption, Power Corrupts

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

Topics: Travel, Fun, Crazy, Reason And Logic

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.

Topics: Saws, Common, Terrorism, Chainsaw, Bulldozers

I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth.

Topics: Atheist, Earth, Being True

Grown men do not need leaders.

Topics: Leadership, Maturity, Men

There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.

Topics: Heartbreaking, Beauty Everywhere

Wilderness and motors are incompatible and the former can best be experienced, understood and enjoyed when the machines are left behind where they belong -- on the superhighways and in the parking lots, on the reservoirs and in the marinas.

Topics: Machines, Wilderness, Left Behind, Parking Lot

I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.

Topics: Betrayal, Fall, May

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.

Topics: Wise, Men, Sight, Another Man

Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

Topics: Taken, Democracy, Anarchy

Those who fear death most are those who enjoy life least.

Topics: Enjoy Life, Fear Of Death, Enjoy

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.

Topics: Sloth, Suffering, Action

An empty man is full of himself.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.28, RosettaBooks

Topics: Men, Empty

Not all questions can be answered.

If you feel that you're not ready to die, never fear; nature will give you complete and adequate assistance when the time comes.

Topics: Giving, Adequate, Never Fear, Ready To Die

Paradise for a happy man lies in his own good nature.

Topics: Lying, Men, Paradise, Lying Men, Happy Man

I stand for what I stand on.

In the modern technoindustrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood.

Topics: Knowing, Culture, Modern, Senility

I suppose each of us has his own fantasy of how he wants to die. I would like to go out in a blaze of glory, myself, or maybe simply disappear someday, far out in the heart of the wilderness I love, all by myself, alone with the Universe and whatever God may happen to be looking on. Disappear - and never return. That's my fantasy.

Topics: Heart, May, Want

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

Topics: Love, Inspirational, Anger

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.

Topics: Country, Men, Rivers

Only a fool is astonished by the foolishness of mankind.

Topics: Fool, Mankind, Foolishness

The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante's paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn.

Topics: Rain, Space, Fire, American West

Be loyal to what you love, be true to the earth, fight your enemies with passion and laughter.

Topics: Love, Marriage, Laughter

Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.

Topics: Art, Perfect, Great Art

Walking takes longer... than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed.

Topics: Life, Waste, Speed, Crawling, Feet And Walking

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

Topics: Death, Believe, Men

The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.

Topics: Punishment, Inspire, Purpose

Beware of your wishes: They will probably come true.

Topics: Wish

The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom.

Topics: Flower, Light, Desert, Individuation, Flora And Fauna

Concrete is heavy; iron is hard - but the grass will prevail.

Topics: Strength, Iron, Grass

The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone and to no one.

Topics: Air, Earth, Sun

How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.

Topics: Beer, Beef, Cabins, Front Porches, Porch

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

Topics: War, Army, Government

The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.

Topics: Government, Political, Purpose, Convenient

We live in a society in which it is normal to be sick; and sick to be abnormal.

Topics: Sick, Abnormal, Normal

The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow.

Topics: World, Bigger, Folks, Hard Truths

Generally speaking, it's a matter of only mild intellectual interest to me whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth. In fact, I don't care a rat's ***** either way.

Topics: Intellectual, Earth, Care

Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal.

Topics: Animal, Men, Lovable

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

Topics: Fate, Men, Age

One thing more dangerous than getting between a grizzly sow and her cub is getting between a businessman and a dollar bill.

Topics: Dollar Bills, Dollars, Cubs, Grizzlies

The function of an ideal is not to be realized but, like that of the North Star, to serve as a guiding point.

Topics: Stars, Function, North Star

Fence straddlers have no balls. In compensation, however, they enjoy a comfortable seat and can retreat swiftly, when danger threatens, to either side of the fence. There is something to be said for every position.

Topics: Balls, Retreat, Sides

Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.

Topics: Utah, Space, Alaska

A good writer must have more than vin rose in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.

Topics: Rose, Veins, Ink

It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.

Topics: Good Life, Laughing, Way

Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.

Topics: Suicidal, Rivers, Mountain, Plath

There is a deep, abiding, unshakable satisfaction in a life of complete failure.

Topics: Abiding, Satisfaction, Unshakable

It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine.

Topics: Feet, Long, Support, Electrons, Revolver

Beware of the man who has no enemies.

Topics: Men, Enemy, He Man

Why must love always be accompanied--sooner or later--by sorrow and pain? Why not? Because pure bliss is for pure idiots.

Topics: Pain, Sorrow, Why Not, Pure Bliss

I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a 'surly, ill-mannered, bad-tempered fellow'. Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.

Topics: Hate, Fire, Sheep, Surly, Curmudgeon

If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.22, RosettaBooks

Topics: Dream, Artist, Self, Farmers And Ranchers, Ranchers

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.

Topics: Beautiful, Home, Heart, Right Place, True Home

What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.

Topics: Desert, Intimate, Draws

One must be reasonable in one's demands on life. For myself, all that I ask is: (1) accurate information; (2) coherent knowledge; (3) deep understanding; (4) infinite loving wisdom; (5) no more kidney stones, please.

Topics: Understanding, Demand, Stones, Kidney Stones, Deep Understanding

I'm in favor of animal liberation. Why? Because I'm an animal.

Topics: Animal, Favors, Liberation, Animal Liberation

The industrial corporation is the natural enemy of nature.

Topics: Enemy, Corporations, Natural, Natural Enemies

There has never been a day in my life when I was not in love.

Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness.

Topics: Running, Sex, Fun

Is the Archbishop's blessing any more meaningful than the Politician's handshake? The come, they go, with bigger things than us on their minds.

Topics: Meaningful, Blessing, Mind, Handshake

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.

Topics: Lying, Writing, Enemy

When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.

Topics: Gun, Government, Outlaw

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.

Topics: Dream, Real, Fall

Doctrines like Christianity or Islam or Marxism require unanimity of belief. One dissenter casts doubt on the creed of millions.

Topics: Atheist, Doubt, Islam, Christian Atheist, Unanimity

Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism.

Topics: Sick, Alcohol, Mama

I am pleased enough with the surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on the rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need?

Topics: Girl, Children, Rocks, Clear Water, Granite

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.

Topics: Brother, Men, Secret, Spinoza, Kindred

Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.

Topics: Book, Fate, People

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

Topics: Suffering, Despise, Stills

The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book.

Topics: Book, Graduates, Good Book

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

Topics: Positive, Atheist, Men

A genius is always on duty; even his dreams are tax deductible.

Topics: Dream, Genius, Duty

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.

Topics: Running, Cutting, Rocks, Bluebird, Aspens

A house built on greed cannot long endure.

Topics: Long, House, Greed

Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.

Topics: Writing, People, Challenges

Government: If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

Topics: Government, Law, Liberty

The longest journey begins with a single step, not with a turn of the ignition key.

Topics: Journey, Keys, Steps, Journey Begins, Hiking In The Mountains

There's another disadvantage to the use of the flashlight: like many other mechanical gadgets it tends to separate a man from the world around him. If I switch it on my eyes adapt to it and I can see only the small pool of light it makes in front of me; I am isolated. Leaving the flashlight in my pocket where it belongs, I remain a part of the environment I walk through and my vision though limited has no sharp or definite boundary.

Topics: Eye, Men, Light, Flashlights

High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring

Topics: Spring, Technology, Simple, Chopping, Chopping Wood

Why is it that the destruction of something created by humans is called vandalism, yet the destruction of something created by God is called development?

Topics: Lakes, Sea, Fishing, Vandalism

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

Topics: Flower, Long, Spontaneous, Wildflowers, Wild Free

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.

Topics: Adventure, Cutting, Civilization

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.

Topics: Men, Numbers, Succeed

A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks, for godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American.

Topics: Risk, Minorities, Alive, Stranded

All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?

Topics: Government, Enemy, Needs

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

Topics: Truth, Delusion

In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United States, industry controls government. That is the principal structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our time.

Topics: Government, Two, Differences, Soviet Union, Oligarchy

We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men.

Topics: Men, Space, Phrases

A man's duty? To be ready -- with rifle or rood -- to defend his home when the showdown comes.

Topics: Home, Men, Rifles, Showdowns

All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.

Topics: Self, Revolution, Causes

A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.

Topics: Joy, Giants, Thirst

Saving the world was merely a hobby. My *vocation* has been that of inspector of desert water holes.

Topics: Water, Hobbies, Desert, Inspectors

What good is a Bill of Rights that does not include the right to play, to wander, to explore, the right to stillness and solitude, to discovery and physical freedom?

Topics: Freedom, Rights, Discovery

Liberty cannot be guaranteed by law. Nor by any thing else except the resolution of free citizens to defend their liberties.

Topics: Law, Liberty, Citizens

Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.

Topics: Enemy, Truth Is

Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.

Topics: Sheep, Taxation, Taxes

I am an enemy of the State. But isn't everyone?

Topics: Enemy, States

The rebel is doomed to a violent death. The rest of us can look forward to sedated expiration in a coma inside an oxygen tent, with tubes inserted in every bodily orifice.

Topics: Oxygen, Rebel, Looks, Coma, Violent Death

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

Topics: Gun, Hands, Civilization, Molotov Cocktail, Soviet

Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.

Topics: Philosophy, Moral, Reckless, Moral Philosophy

Our modern industrial economy takes a mountain covered with trees, lakes, running streams and transforms it into a mountain of junk, garbage, slime pits, and debris.

Topics: Running, Lakes, Tree

Except for the scale of the operation, there was nothing unusual about Hitler's massacre of the Jews. Genocide's an old tradition, as human as mother love or cherry pie.

Topics: Mother, Pie, Tradition, Old Traditions, Cherry Pie

What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.

Topics: Tree, Giants, Purpose

Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.

Topics: Knowing, Grows, Wiser

Are people more important than the grizzly bear? Only from the point of view of some people.

Topics: Views, People, Important, Grizzly Bears, Grizzlies

It is not death or dying that is tragic, but rather to have existed without fully participating in life- that is the deepest personal tragedy.

Topics: Tragedy, Dying, Tragic, Personal Tragedy

Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.

Topics: Running, Coffee, Second Chance, Coffee And Tea, Tea Coffee

Why this cult of wilderness?... because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.

Topics: Smell, Taste, Wilderness

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

Topics: Dream, Atheist, Imagination, Supernatural Powers, There Being No God

A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.

Topics: Mean, Leader, Example, Whips

All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.

Topics: Dams, Ugly, Canyons

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

Topics: Wise, Men, Astrology

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

Topics: True Love, Life Is Hard, Body

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

Topics: Positive, Tired, Thinking

All living things on earth are kindred.

Topics: Earth, Kindred

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

Topics: Fashion, Communication, Nerves, Instant Communication

My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.

Topics: Writing, Ambition, Meditation, Huts

Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.28, RosettaBooks

Topics: Life, Regret, Grief, Never Regret Anything

Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses....

Topics: Religious, Horse, Believe, Banjos

Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.

Topics: Adventure, Half, Pleasure, Reluctant, Half Hearted

How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth, with its swirling vaporous atmosphere, its flowing and frozen liquids, its trembling plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures, the croaking things with wings that hang on rocks and soar through the fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas.

Topics: Home, Sea, Wings

The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an “equalizer.

Topics: Military, Police, Democracy, Patriotic Gun, Revolver

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.

Topics: Photography, Jobs, Light, Light And Shadow

The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.

Topics: Nature, Human Nature, Domination

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

Topics: Friendship, Dog, Silly, Man And Dog, Cat And Dog

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

Topics: Missionary, Savages, Enough, Enough Already

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.

Topics: Teamwork, Real, Stupid, Team Building, Funny Teamwork

Nature is indifferent to our love, but never unfaithful.

source: - Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.47, RosettaBooks

Topics: Nature, Our Love, Unfaithful

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

Topics: Inspirational, Funny, Life, Independence Day Patriotic, Founding Fathers Democracy