EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES II

American author (1927-1989)

Contempt for animal life leads to contempt for human life.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: animals


A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.

EDWARD ABBEY

Hayduke Lives

Tags: pessimism


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


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang


I am not an atheist but an earthiest.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Down the River", Desert Solitaire

Tags: atheism


Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.

EDWARD ABBEY

Down the River

Tags: coffee


The desert rat carries one distinction like a halo: he has learned to love the kind of country that most people find unlovable.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: desert


Where life is there is death, reasons the vulture, and where there's death there's hope.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: death


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


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


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


The tragedy of modern war is not so much that the young men die but that they die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: war, death


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


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


All living things on earth are kindred.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire

Tags: life


Everyone should learn a manual trade. It's never too late to become an honest person.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: work


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