Edward Abbey Quotes

When the cities are gone, he thought, and all the ruckus has died away, when sunflowers push up through the concrete and asphalt of the forgotten interstate freeways, when the Kremlin and the Pentagon are turned into nursing homes for generals, presidents and other such shitheads, when the glass-aluminum skyscraper tombs of Phoenix Arizona barely show above the sand dunes, why then, why then, why then by God maybe free men and wild women on horses, free women and wild men, can roam the sagebrush canyonlands in freedom — goddammit! — herding the feral cattle into box canyons, and gorge on bloody meat and bleeding fucking internal organs, and dance all night to the music of fiddles! banjos! steel guitars! by the light of a reborn moon! — by God, yes! Until, he reflected soberly, and bitterly, and sadly, until the next age of ice and iron comes down, and the engineers and the farmers

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

I might also say, regarding reviews and reviewers, that I have yet to read a review of any of my own books which I could not have written much better myself.

I am against all forms of government, including good government.

Gluttony - that's my vice & curse. I want too much of everything. Books... Love... Music... Color & Form... Philosophy... Travel & Adventure... the result of this bestial lust is the indiscriminate and promiscuous splaying of my energies - wanting all, I accomplish nothing; desiring everything, I satisfy nothing and am satisfied by nothing.

My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.

If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.

Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.

One no longer searches for any ulterior significance in all this; as in the finest music, the meaning is in the music itself, not in anything beyond it. All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred

All men at heart, she thought — at bottom should I say? — are really queer. The way ballplayers pat one another on the fannies, running onto the field or coming out of the huddle. The Greek quarterback and the nervous center. Queer as clams. Though of course none would have the decency or honesty or nerve to admit it.

I had discovered that I am the kind of person who cannot live comfortably, tolerably, on all-flat terrain. For the sake of inner equilibrium there has to be at least one mountain range on at least one of the four quarters of my horizon-and not more than a day’s walk away.

Paradise is not a garden of bliss and changeless perfection where the lions lie down like lambs (what would they eat?) and the angels and cherubim and seraphim rotate in endless idiotic circles, like clockwork, about an equally inane and ludicrous — however roseate — unmoved mover. That particular painted fantasy of a realm beyond time and space which Aristotle and the church fathers tried to palm off on us has met, in modern times, only neglect and indifference passing on into oblivion it so richly deserved, while the paradise of which I write and wish to praise is with us yet, the the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real earth on which we stand.

When I want to write something I just sit down (or stand up) and do it. Scribble, scribble, nothing could be easier. It helps, naturally, to have something to say.

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.