Quotes by Edward Abbey

About Edward Abbey:

Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.

Edward Abbey

It's a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true--nobody will ever take you seriously.

Edward Abbey

They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which...

Edward Abbey

Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

Edward Abbey

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

Edward Abbey

We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.

Edward Abbey

Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless....

Edward Abbey

The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante's paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after r...

Edward Abbey

A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may...

Edward Abbey

Reason is and ought to be, as Hume said, the slave of the passions.

Edward Abbey

So I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally.

Edward Abbey

Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, wh...

Edward Abbey

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.

Edward Abbey

One mile farther and I come to a second grave beside the road, nameless like the other, marked only with the dull blue-black stones of the badlands. I do not pause this time. The more often you stop the more difficult it is to continue. Stop too long...

Edward Abbey

The black rock was sharp-edged, hot, and hard as corundum; it seemed not merely alien but impervious to life. Yet on the southern face of almost every rock the lichens grew, yellow, rusty-brown, yellow-green, like patches of dirty paint daubed on the...

Edward Abbey

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.

Edward Abbey

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Edward Abbey

Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.

Edward Abbey

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

Edward Abbey

All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

Edward Abbey

Author Bio

  • NameEdward Abbey
  • DescriptionAmerican author and essayist
  • AliasesEdward Paul Abbey
  • BornJanuary 29, 1927
  • DiedMarch 14, 1989
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Philosopher; Essayist