Edward Abbey Quotes - Famous Quotes by Edward Abbey
Born: 1927-01-29
Died: 1989-03-14
Edward Abbey Biography
'Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.'
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Patriotic ] [ Government ] ***
A drink a day keeps the shrink away.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Drinking ] ***
A journey into the wilderness is the freest, cheapest, most nonprivileged of pleasures. Anyone with two legs and the price of a pair of army surplus combat boots may enter.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Patriotic ] [ Government ] ***
Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Abortion ] ***
An empty man is full of himself.
- Edward Abbey
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Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
- Edward Abbey
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Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.
- Edward Abbey
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Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Baseball ] ***
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Imagination ] ***
Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
- Edward Abbey
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Cheer up, comrades: You can't feel as bad as you look. Or look as bad as you feel.
- Edward Abbey
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Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Civilization ] [ Culture ] ***
Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube. There are some things one would rather have done than do.
- Edward Abbey
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Concrete is heavy; iron is hard--but the grass will prevail.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
Democracy--rule by the people--sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Democracy ] [ America ] ***
Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are--retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Football ] ***
For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
- Edward Abbey
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For there is a cloud on my horizon. A small dark cloud no bigger than my hand. Its name is Progress.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Progress ] ***
Freedom begins between the ears.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Freedom ] ***
Grown men do not need leaders.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Leadership ] ***
Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Growth ] ***
Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers-- obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.
- Edward Abbey
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High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Technology ] ***
I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government --and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws.
- Edward Abbey
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If the end does not justify the means - what can?
- Edward Abbey
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If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Majority ] ***
In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.
- Edward Abbey
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In the dog-eat-dog economy, the Doberman is boss.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Dog ] [ Economics ] ***
In the modern techno-industrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Technology ] ***
It is not an easy thing to inflate a dog.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Dog ] ***
It seems clear at last that our love for the natural world — Nature — is the only means by which we can requite God's obvious love for it.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Love ] [ Anger ] ***
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
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Mexico: where life is cheap, death is rich, and the buzzards are never unhappy.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Mexican ] ***
Money confers the power to command the labor of others. Love of money is love of power. And love of power is the root of evil.”
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Money ] [ Power ] ***
My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Book ] [ Writing ] [ Ambition ] ***
New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ New York ] ***
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
- Edward Abbey
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One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
- Edward Abbey
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Only a fool is astonished by the foolishness of mankind.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Fool ] ***
Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
- Edward Abbey
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Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Conservative ] ***
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Coffee ] ***
Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Power ] ***
Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Reason ] ***
Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.
- Edward Abbey
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Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Tax ] ***
That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Science ] ***
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Wit ] ***
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
- Edward Abbey
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The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Power ] ***
The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Christian ] ***
The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Corruption ] ***
The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Conservative ] [ Liberal ] ***
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Government ] [ War ] ***
There are circumstances in which suicide presents a viable option; a workable alternative; the only sensible solution.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Suicide ] ***
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ California ] ***
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and animals. Stand up for the stupid and crazy. Take your hat off to no man.
- Edward Abbey
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What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Congress ] ***
When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Dog ] ***
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Bank ] ***
When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Philosophy ] ***
Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.
- Edward Abbey
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Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Nature ] ***
Women truly are better than men. Otherwise, they'd be intolerable.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Women ] ***
You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.
- Edward Abbey
More quotations on: [ Darkness ] ***
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