American author (1927-1989)
We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
EDWARD ABBEY
Abbey's Road
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
Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Journey Home
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)
I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire
God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
EDWARD ABBEY
Down the River
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
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
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
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
When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
The most attractive feature of Alaska, I say, is its small, insignificant human population.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
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
The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
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)
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