EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES III

American author (1927-1989)

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.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Down the River", Desert Solitaire

Tags: paradise


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

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: dogs


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)


We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: freedom


To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.

EDWARD ABBEY

"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", Desert Solitaire

Tags: death


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.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Walking", The Journey Home

Tags: walking


The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Shadows from the Big Woods", The Journey Home


The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night", The Journey Home

Tags: cities


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

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: democracy


Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: stupidity, teamwork


Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.

EDWARD ABBEY

"The Crooked Wood", The Journey Home

Tags: men


Love is a disease. A social disease. A romantic, venereal, medieval disease. A hangover from the days of the fornicating troubadours and the gentlemen in iron britches.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: love


Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death.

EDWARD ABBEY

Down the River

Tags: love


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


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


Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Water", Desert Solitaire

Tags: growth


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


Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Cliffrose and Bayonets", Desert Solitaire

Tags: beauty


Contempt for animal life leads to contempt for human life.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: animals