EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES III

American author (1927-1989)

The most attractive feature of Alaska, I say, is its small, insignificant human population.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside


Love is a disease. A social disease. A romantic, venereal, medieval disease. A hangover from the days of the fornicating troubadours and the gentlemen in iron britches.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: love


Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: anarchy, democracy


The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: wit, tyranny


Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: civilization, survival


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Journey Home

Tags: growth


Capitalism: Nothing so mean could be right. Greed is the ugliest of the capital sins.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: capitalism


When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: dogs


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang


All living things on earth are kindred.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire

Tags: life


I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire


God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: God


Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Cliffrose and Bayonets", Desert Solitaire

Tags: beauty


When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: money


No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: tyranny


All gold is fool's gold.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: gold


Money attracts because it gives us the means to command the labor and service and finally the lives of others--human or otherwise.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: money


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


What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

EDWARD ABBEY

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


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