Edward Abbey: Likeness

Edward Abbey was American author and essayist. Explore interesting quotes on likeness.
Edward Abbey: 292 quotes15 likes

“Come on in. The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone — and to no one.”

Edward Abbey

“Come On In”, p. 88
The Journey Home (1977)

“Civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates, like tired, sick, stifled blood.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Episodes and Visions", p. 308
Desert Solitaire (1968)
Context: To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori; Civilization is Sartre; culture Cocteau; Civilization is mutual aid and self-defense; culture is the judge, the lawbook and the forces of Law & Ordure (sic); Civilization is uprising, insurrection, revolution; culture is the war of state against state, or of machines against people, as in Hungary and Vietnam; Civilization is tolerance, detachment and humor, or passion, anger, revenge; culture is the entrance examination, the gas chamber, the doctoral dissertation and the electric chair; Civilization is the Ukrainian peasant Nestor Makhno fighting the Germans, then the Reds, then the Whites, then the Reds again; culture is Stalin and the Fatherland; Civilization is Jesus turning water into wine; culture is Christ walking on the waves; Civilization is a youth with a Molotov cocktail in his hand; culture is the Soviet tank or the L. A. cop that guns him down; Civilization is the wild river; culture, 592,000 tons of cement; Civilization flows; culture thickens and coagulates, like tired, sick, stifled blood.

“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

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

Edward Abbey

Source: The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader

“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

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

“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)

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

Edward Abbey

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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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