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Edward Abbey
95 quotes
“Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abbey's Road (1979)
“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 (1927–1989) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abbey's Road in In Defense of the Redneck (1979), p. 168.
“We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abbey's Road (1979)
“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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks, Glen Canyon Dam, Spring Equinox 1981.
“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 (1927–1989) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989 (1994) p. 92
“I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All living things on earth are kindred.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. (Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!)”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love flowers best in openness and freedom.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes — disease and death and the rotting of flesh.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not an atheist but an earthiest.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What's more American than violence?" Hayduke wanted to know. "Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He recalled Dr. Sarvis' favorite apothegm: When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Come on in. The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone — and to no one.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly; it's the highway that is ugly.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Second Rape of the West," The Journey Home, 1977
“As for the "solitary confinement of the mind," my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he's a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The longest journey begins with a single step, not with the turn of an ignition key. That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t much matter whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. 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 (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[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.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death. Loving our mysterious blue planet, we resolve riddles and dissolve all enigmas in contingent bliss.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the elms of Central Park, a Morgan police horse screaming in its jaws. We can never have enough of nature.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the life of natural things, millions of years old, does not seem sacred to us, then what can be sacred? Human vanity alone? Contempt for the natural world implies contempt for life. The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'There is no situation so bad that the cops can't make it worse.'”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'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.'”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source