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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   quotes 14   likes

Edward Abbey Quotes

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

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

Seldom Seen Smith, page 313
The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

Stupidity

“I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.”

Edward Abbey

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

“I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The First Morning", p. 7
Desert Solitaire (1968)

World , Communication , Idea , Bird

“What's more American than violence?" Hayduke wanted to know. "Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.”

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

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

Edward Abbey

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

“I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. 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” p. 208
The Journey Home (1977)

Life , People , Understanding , Dependency

“I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Serpents of Paradise", p. 18
Desert Solitaire (1968)

“According to the current doctrines of mysticoscientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but "organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multi-dimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum." I'll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I'm going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces.”

Edward Abbey

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

Drink , Beer , Thinking , Time

“Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.”

Edward Abbey

"The Crooked Wood", p. 208
The Journey Home (1977)

Tree , Learning

“I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.”

Edward Abbey

"Gather at the River", page 164
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984)

Beauty , Music , Time , Sun

“The "Terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.”

Edward Abbey

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

“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 book Desert Solitaire

"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", p. 186
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Bird , Wolf , Sun

“I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the elms of Central Park, a Morgan police horse screaming in its jaws. We can never have enough of nature.”

Edward Abbey book Down the River

Down the River (1982)

Life , Nature , Horse

“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.”

Edward Abbey

Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989 (1994) p. 92

Love , History , Star , Singing

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

Edward Abbey

Abbey's Road (1979)

“The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.”

Edward Abbey

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

Law

“In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority.”

Edward Abbey

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

“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 in In Defense of the Redneck (1979), p. 168.

People , Nature

“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", p. 98
The Journey Home (1977)

Life , Dreams , Waiting

“Among politicians and businessman, Pragmatism is the current term for "To hell with our children."”

Edward Abbey

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

Children , Hell

“There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.”

Edward Abbey

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

Stupidity , World

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

Edward Abbey

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

God

“Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.”

Edward Abbey

Abbey's Road (1979)

Home

“Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Bedrock and Paradox", p. 233
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Secret

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

Edward Abbey book Down the River

Source: Down the River (1982), p. 81

Coffee

“Enjoy our great American West -- climb those mountains, run those rivers, hike those canyons, explore those forests, and share in the bounty of wilderness, friendship, love, and the common effort to save what we love. Do this and we will be strong, and bold, and happy, we will outlive our enemies, we will live to piss on their graves.”

Edward Abbey

Remarks https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/edward-abbey-remarks-glen-canyon-dam-spring-equinox-1981, Glen Canyon Dam, Spring Equinox 1981.

Friendship , Strong , Mountain , Love

“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.”

Edward Abbey book Down the River

"Down the River", p. 148
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Water

“What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.”

Edward Abbey

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

Money , Whore , Making love

“My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.”

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

George Hayduke, page 229
The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

“What's more American than violence?”

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

Hayduke wanted to know. "Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.
The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)