Edward Abbey quotes - page 6

Let us hope our weapons are never needed - but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. (Edward Abbey)
Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness. View quote
Edward Abbey
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. View quote
Edward Abbey
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. View quote
Edward Abbey
I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way. View quote
Edward Abbey
The rifle and handgun are 'equalizers' -- the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship. View quote
Edward Abbey
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. View quote
Edward Abbey
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul. View quote
Edward Abbey
Business: Busyness. View quote
Edward Abbey
One wishes to go on. On this great river one could glide forever - and here we discover the definition of bliss, salvation, Heaven, all the old Mediterranean dreams: a journey from wonder to wonder, drifting through eternity into ever-deeper, always changing grandeur, through beauty continually surpassing itself: the ultimate Homeric voyage. View quote
Edward Abbey
There is no situation so bad that the cops can't make it worse. (Edward Abbey)
With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams. View quote
Edward Abbey
A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts. View quote
Edward Abbey
What do we know? What do we really know? He licks his dried cracked lips. We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foreknowledge of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement. I challenge that statement. With what? I don't know. View quote
Edward Abbey
But the love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only home we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need - if only we had the eyes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us - if only we were worthy of it. View quote
Edward Abbey
Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human. View quote
Edward Abbey
Enjoy our great American West -- climb those mountains, run those rivers, hike those canyons, explore those forests, and share in the bounty of wilderness, friendship, love, and the common effort to save what we love. Do this and we will be strong, and bold, and happy, we will outlive our enemies, we will live to piss on their graves. View quote
Edward Abbey
[Concerning river runners:] If we were going into war again I can't think of any I'd rather have on our side. I mean, all of these good men and women. And if they were on the other side I'd join the other side. View quote
Edward Abbey
Don't let yourself become cynical. Cynicism is a cheap emotion, a craven substitute for thought and action. Cynicism corrodes the will, dulls the conscience, blunts your sense of right and wrong... Stay alert to fine distinctions: become a pessimist like me. View quote
Edward Abbey
The plow has probably done more harm - in the long run - than the sword. View quote
Edward Abbey
According to the current doctrines of mysticoscientism, we human animals are really and actually nothing but "organic patterns of nodular energy composed of collocations of infinitesimal points oscillating on the multi-dimensional coordinates of the space-time continuum." I'll have to think about that. Sometime. Meantime, I'm going to gnaw on this sparerib, drink my Blatz beer, and contemplate the a posteriori coordinates of that young blonde over yonder, the one in the tennis skirt, tying her shoelaces. (Edward Abbey)
Only a fool is astonished by the foolishness of mankind. View quote
Edward Abbey
The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself - not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly. View quote
Edward Abbey
We are kindred all of us, ... killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us. View quote
Edward Abbey
The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses. View quote
Edward Abbey