“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.”

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "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." by Edward Abbey?
Edward Abbey photo
Edward Abbey 146
American author and essayist 1927–1989

Related quotes

Miranda July photo

“It is terrible to have to ask for anything ever. We wish we were something that needed nothing, like paint. But even paint needs repainting.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Shashi Tharoor photo

“No Indian nationalist leader ever needed to say: We have created India; now all we need to do is to create Indians.”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

Rediff News, "Who is an Indian?", Available Online http://www.rediff.com/republic/2000/apr/06shashi.htm, April 6, 2000
2000s

Viktor E. Frankl photo

“You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints."”

Postscript 1984 : The Case for a Tragic Optimism, based on a lecture at the Third World Congress of Logotherapy, Regensburg University (19 June 1983)
Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
Context: You may of course ask whether we really need to refer to "saints." Wouldn't it suffice just to refer to decent people? It is true that they form a minority. More than that, they always will remain a minority. And yet I see therein the very challenge to join the minority. For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.
So, let us be alert — alert in a twofold sense:
Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.
And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Prince photo
Kate Raworth photo

“Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive. What we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow.”

[Raworth, Kate, This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook, 2019, London, Penguin Books, 146-154, A new economics, 9780141991443]

Felix Adler photo

“We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: We should teach our children nothing which they shall ever need to unlearn; we should strive to transmit to them the best possessions, the truest thought, the noblest sentiments of the age in which we live.

Libba Bray photo
Laura Ingalls Wilder photo

Related topics