Edward Abbey Quotes
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Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies. His best-known works include Desert Solitaire, a non-fiction autobiographical account of his time as a park ranger at Arches National Park considered to be iconic work of nature writing and a staple of early environmentalist writing, the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by environmentalists and groups defending nature by various means, also called eco-warriors, his novel Hayduke Lives, and his essay collections Down the River and One Life at a Time, Please . Wikipedia

✵ 29. January 1927 – 14. March 1989

Edward Abbey: 146 quotes15 likes

Edward Abbey Quotes

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

Source: The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader

“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.”

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

“A house built on greed cannot long endure.”

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.”

“The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.”

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“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.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 4 : Life and Death and All That p.43

“I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.”

Source: Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

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

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Cliffrose and Bayonets", p. 37
Source: Desert Solitaire (1968)

“A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

“I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings.”

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy…. Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid.”

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“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 book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

“Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.”

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“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.”

“I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.”

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

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

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

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

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

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

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Water", p. 104
Source: Desert Solitaire (1968)

“We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

Source: Desert Solitaire

“The rifle and handgun are 'equalizers' -- the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.”

“Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Water", p. 113; this is often quoted as simply: Without courage, all other virtues are useless. 
Source: Desert Solitaire (1968)
Context: Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

“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.”

“Music clouds the intellect but clarifies the heart.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal

“Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 100

“[Concerning river runners:] If we were going into war again I can't think of any I'd rather have on our side. I mean, all of these good men and women. And if they were on the other side I'd join the other side.”

Edward Abbey book Down the River

Down the River (1982)

“Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 97

“We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The Heart of Noon", p. 116
Desert Solitaire (1968)

“Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 100

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

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

“Business: Busyness.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 100

“Don't let yourself become cynical. Cynicism is a cheap emotion, a craven substitute for thought and action. Cynicism corrodes the will, dulls the conscience, blunts your sense of right and wrong… Stay alert to fine distinctions: become a pessimist like me.”

Edward Abbey book Hayduke Lives

Hayduke Lives (1990)

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

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers — obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.”

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.”

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.”

"How It Was", page 55
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984)

“One wishes to go on. On this great river one could glide forever — and here we discover the definition of bliss, salvation, Heaven, all the old Mediterranean dreams: a journey from wonder to wonder, drifting through eternity into ever-deeper, always changing grandeur, through beauty continually surpassing itself: the ultimate Homeric voyage.”

On the Colorado River, in “Down the River with Major Powell”, p. 201
The Journey Home (1977)

“When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 97

“There is no situation so bad that the cops can't make it worse.”

Edward Abbey book Hayduke Lives

Hayduke Lives (1990)

“The plow has probably done more harm — in the long run — than the sword.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 100

“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 book Desert Solitaire

"Down the River", p. 147
Desert Solitaire (1968)

“An empty man is full of himself.”

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and powerful.”

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.”

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“All living things on earth are kindred.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Serpents of Paradise", p. 22
Desert Solitaire (1968)

“With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990), Ch. 11 : Money Et Cetera, p. 100

“A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.”

Edward Abbey book Hayduke Lives

Hayduke Lives (1990)

“What do we know? What do we really know? He licks his dried cracked lips. We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foreknowledge of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement. I challenge that statement. With what? I don't know.”

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

page 312
The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

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

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

“Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly; it's the highway that is ugly.”

"The Second Rape of the West," The Journey Home, 1977
The Journey Home (1977)