1. Top Famous Quotes
    2. /
  2. Edward Abbey Quotes

Top Edward Abbey Quotes

Browse top 153 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Edward Abbey.

Favorite Edward Abbey Quotes

1. "Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you -- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls." ~ Edward Abbey
2. "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." ~ Edward Abbey
3. "All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?" ~ Edward Abbey
4. "my god! i'm thinking, what incredible shit we've put up with most of our lives - the domestic routine (same old jobs, insufferable arrogance of elected officials, the crafty cheating and the slimy advertising of the businessman, the tedious wars in which we kill our buddies instead of our real enemies back home in the capital, the foul diseased and hideous cities and towns we live in, the constant petty tyranny of automatic washers and automobiles and tv machines and telephones -! ah christ!, i'm thinking, at the same time that i'm waving goodby to that hollering idiot on shore, what intolerable garbage and what utterly useless crap we bury ourselves in day by day, while patiently enduring at the same time the creeping strangulation of the clean white collar and the rich but modest four-in-hand garrote)" ~ Edward Abbey
5. "it will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. this is true. unless a way is found to stabilize the nation's population, the parks can not be saved. or anything else worth a damn. wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment. for my own part i would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world." ~ Edward Abbey
6. "Of all the featherless beasts, only man, chained by his self-imposed slavery to the clock, denies the elemental fire and proceeds as best he can about his business, suffering quietly, martyr to his madness. Much to learn." ~ Edward Abbey
7. "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
8. "To aid and abet in the destruction of a single species or in the extermination of a single tribe is to commit a crime against God, a mortal sin against Mother Nature. Better by far to sacrifice in some degree the interests of mechanical civilization, curtail our gluttonous appetite for things, ever more things, learn to moderate our needs, and most important, and not difficult, learn to control, limit and gradually reduce our human numbers. We humans swarm over the planet like a plague of locusts, multiplying and devouring. There is no justice, sense or decency in this mindless global breeding spree, this obscene anthropoid fecundity, this industrialized mass production of babies and bodies, ever more bodies and babies. The man-centered view of the world in anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, antinature, antilife, and--antihuman." ~ Edward Abbey
9. "What's more American than violence?" Hayduke wanted to know. "Violence, it's as American as pizza pie." ~ Edward Abbey
10. "Vonnegut is one of America's basic artists, a true and worthy heir to the grand tradition of Thoreau, Whitman, Twain, Dreiser, Traven, Tom Wolfe (the real Tom Wolfe, I mean) and Steinbeck. In other words, he writes out of a concern for justice, love, honesty, and hope." ~ Edward Abbey
11. "In demonstrating that humans behave with justice, tolerance, reason, love toward other forms of life, we are doing no more than demanding that humans be human -- that is, be true to the best aspects of human nature. Humans being human, therefore, cannot consider themselves morally superior to, say, bears being bear-like, eagles being eagle-like, etc." ~ Edward Abbey
12. "And the wind blows, the dust clouds darken the desert blue, pale sand and red dust drift across the asphalt trails and tumbleweeds fill the arroyos. Good-bye, come again. (p. 34)" ~ Edward Abbey
13. "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
14. "But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust." ~ Edward Abbey
15. "If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose." ~ Edward Abbey
16. "There is this to be said for walking: it is the one method of human locomotion by which a man or woman proceeds erect, upright, proud and independent, not squatting on the haunches like a frog.Little boys love machines. Grown-up mean and women like to walk." ~ Edward Abbey
17. "I stand for what I stand on." ~ Edward Abbey
18. "Why this cult of wilderness?... because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger." ~ Edward Abbey
19. "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." ~ Edward Abbey
20. "Anarchism is democracy taken seriously." ~ Edward Abbey
21. "A house built on greed cannot long endure." ~ Edward Abbey
22. "Whatever we cannot understand easily we call God; this saves wear and tear on the brain tissues." ~ Edward Abbey
23. "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." ~ Edward Abbey
24. "We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope." ~ Edward Abbey
25. "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 is contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature. Anything becomes permissible. We return once more to the nightmare cultures of Hitler, Stalin, King Philip II, Montezuma, Caligula, Heliogabalus, Herod, the Pharaohs; Christ sacrificed himself in vain." ~ Edward Abbey
26. "Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul." ~ Edward Abbey
27. "Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second." ~ Edward Abbey
28. "When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem." ~ Edward Abbey
29. "Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination." ~ Edward Abbey
30. "Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down." ~ Edward Abbey
31. "A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society." ~ Edward Abbey
32. "The gross evil of our time defies all labels." ~ Edward Abbey
33. "Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be." ~ Edward Abbey
34. "To the Technocrats: Have mercy on us. Relax a bit, take time out for simple pleasures. For example, the luxuries of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating, instant electronic communication and such, have taught me to relearn and enjoy the basic human satisfactions of dipping water from a cold clear mountain stream; of building a wood fire in a cast-iron stove; of using long winter nights for making music, making things, making love; of writing long letters, in longhand with a fountain pen, to the few people on this earth I truly care about." ~ Edward Abbey
35. "I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand." ~ Edward Abbey
36. "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." ~ Edward Abbey
37. "I am not an atheist but an earthiest. Be true to the earth." ~ Edward Abbey
38. "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." ~ Edward Abbey
39. "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
40. "Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best. ... Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject." ~ Edward Abbey
41. "Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart." ~ Edward Abbey
42. "Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing." ~ Edward Abbey
43. "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell." ~ Edward Abbey
44. "Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit." ~ Edward Abbey
45. "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." ~ Edward Abbey
46. "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
47. "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." ~ Edward Abbey
48. "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
49. "An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human." ~ Edward Abbey
50. "An empty man is full of himself." ~ Edward Abbey
First«1234»Last

Edward Abbey Quotes Pictures

Edward Abbey Quotes
Edward Abbey Quotes
Edward Abbey Quotes

Today's Quote

Well, don't let your thighs rub too close together, because you look like you're about to have a walking orgasm"
Author: Christine Zolendz

What Did Edward Abbey Talk About?

Ear
Wit
End
Con
Thin
Lit
Here
Per
Tan
Thou
Hum
Use
Sin
Act
Hen
Wild
King
Less
Ten
Win
Owe
Nation
Old
Free
Tie
Sing
Light
Ring
Era
Low
America
Ways
May
Son
Ally
Off
Again
Earth
Mean
True
Hey
Rock
Water
Book
Lie
Cause
Hear
Self
Year
Sure

Famous Authors

Popular Topics

Copyright © 2023 Top Famous Quotes. All Rights Reserved. | New Quotes | Topic List | Author List | Privacy Policy | About Us | Contact Us |