EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES IV

American author (1927-1989)

We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.

EDWARD ABBEY

Abbey's Road


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

EDWARD ABBEY

Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Tags: scandal


Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect -- like a man -- on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.

EDWARD ABBEY

Postcards from Ed

Tags: walking


Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: society


The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: wit, tyranny


The tragedy of modern war is not so much that the young men die but that they die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: war, death


Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: civilization, survival


I am not an atheist but an earthiest.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Down the River", Desert Solitaire

Tags: atheism


All living things on earth are kindred.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire

Tags: life


All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge", The Journey Home

Tags: beauty


Grab a woman. Help the movement. Liberate a woman tonight. You'll get stale out here in the woods, living like a bear. Your balls will shrink, your tongue grow stiff and heavy. Your mind will wither away. Whatever became of William Gatlin? Went mad flogging his bloody duff.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: women


I try to think of a favorite among my arid-country flowers. But I love them all. How could we be true to one without being false to all the others?

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: flowers


What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)


Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.

EDWARD ABBEY

Abbey's Road

Tags: guns


I love your letters. How far is that from saying I love you? Well--about a mile. Two miles.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: love


Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: violence


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

EDWARD ABBEY

"Water", Desert Solitaire


Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: anarchy, democracy


Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely an illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: diet, food


The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: democracy