EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES II

American author (1927-1989)

Money attracts because it gives us the means to command the labor and service and finally the lives of others--human or otherwise.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: money


Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely an illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: diet, food


I am not an atheist but an earthiest.

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"Down the River", Desert Solitaire

Tags: atheism


I love your letters. How far is that from saying I love you? Well--about a mile. Two miles.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: love


Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: civilization, survival


The tragedy of modern war is not so much that the young men die but that they die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: war, death


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


The desert rat carries one distinction like a halo: he has learned to love the kind of country that most people find unlovable.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: desert


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", Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: technology


I try to think of a favorite among my arid-country flowers. But I love them all. How could we be true to one without being false to all the others?

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: flowers


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


Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: violence


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang


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


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

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: democracy


All gold is fool's gold.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: gold


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

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: newspapers


A cowboy is a hired hand on the middle of a horse contemplating the hind end of a cow.

EDWARD ABBEY

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


Everyone should learn a manual trade. It's never too late to become an honest person.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: work


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

EDWARD ABBEY

Abbey's Road