EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES IV

American author (1927-1989)

The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: democracy


Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: society


One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: stupidity, teamwork


Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely an illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: diet, food


Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.

EDWARD ABBEY

"The Crooked Wood", The Journey Home

Tags: men


In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.

EDWARD ABBEY

Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Tags: scandal


I try to think of a favorite among my arid-country flowers. But I love them all. How could we be true to one without being false to all the others?

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: flowers


Grab a woman. Help the movement. Liberate a woman tonight. You'll get stale out here in the woods, living like a bear. Your balls will shrink, your tongue grow stiff and heavy. Your mind will wither away. Whatever became of William Gatlin? Went mad flogging his bloody duff.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: women


Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am -- a reluctant enthusiast ... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.

EDWARD ABBEY

attributed, Saving Nature's Legacy


All living things on earth are kindred.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire

Tags: life


All gold is fool's gold.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

Tags: gold


A cowboy is a hired hand on the middle of a horse contemplating the hind end of a cow.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)


We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: freedom


Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: violence


Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang


Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death.

EDWARD ABBEY

Down the River

Tags: love


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.

EDWARD ABBEY

Abbey's Road

Tags: guns


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Journey Home

Tags: growth


Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Water", Desert Solitaire

Tags: growth


Beyond the wall of the unreal city ... there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: nature