EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES III

American author (1927-1989)

We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: freedom


All gold is fool's gold.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: gold


At that moment I was ready to forsake my other home, forsake my mother and father and little sister and all my friends, and spend the rest of my life in the desert eating cactus for lunch, drinking blood at cocktail time, and letting the ferocious sun flay me skin and soul. I'd gladly have traded parents, school, a college education and a career for one dependable saddle hourse. Later that night, of course, alone in bed, the deadly homesickness would strike me faint.

EDWARD ABBEY

Fire on the Mountain


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


What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

EDWARD ABBEY

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


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

Tags: guns


Beyond the wall of the unreal city ... there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: nature


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

"Down the River", Desert Solitaire

Tags: paradise


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


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


When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: stupidity, teamwork


Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am -- a reluctant enthusiast ... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.

EDWARD ABBEY

attributed, Saving Nature's Legacy


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

EDWARD ABBEY

Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Tags: scandal


Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect -- like a man -- on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.

EDWARD ABBEY

Postcards from Ed

Tags: walking


Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: society


The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: wit, tyranny


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

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: civilization, survival


Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Journey Home

Tags: growth


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

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: capitalism