Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama -- soap opera with literary trimmings.

Edward Abbey

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More Quotes From Edward Abbey

To the intelligent man or woman, life appears infinitely mysterious. But the stupid have an answer for every question.

Edward Abbey
intelligentstupidmen
The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its governme... by Edward Abbey

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

Edward Abbey
inspirationallifefunny

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
natureadventureinspirational

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.

Edward Abbey
loyaltynatureinspirational

The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

Edward Abbey
hateairthinking

Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast....a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic....So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space.

Edward Abbey
riversrunningsweet

There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated... To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

Edward Abbey
distanceforeverinteresting
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit. by Edward Abbey

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

Edward Abbey
insperationalhikingnature

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

Edward Abbey
loyaltyspirituallove

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
scumpoliticalfunny

If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.

Edward Abbey
artistselfdream

I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.

Edward Abbey
starsmemorablenight

I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a "surly, illmannered, badtempered fellow." ... Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.

Edward Abbey
hatefiresheep
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. by Edward Abbey

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

Edward Abbey
cancernatureinspirational
Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks e... by Edward Abbey

Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies.

Edward Abbey
true-lovehard-lifelife-is-hard
Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts... by Edward Abbey

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

Edward Abbey
anarchyworstpower

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
realizationkingsyears

Why is it that the destruction of something created by humans is called vandalism, yet the destruction of something created by God is called development?

Edward Abbey
sealakesrivers

If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies' territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers.

Edward Abbey
territoryfactspeople

May your rivers flow without end... down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs... where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you-beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

Edward Abbey
walldreambeautiful