American author (1927-1989)
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
"The First Morning", Desert Solitaire
When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
EDWARD ABBEY
Abbey's Road
We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
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
"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", Desert Solitaire
The most attractive feature of Alaska, I say, is its small, insignificant human population.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Contempt for animal life leads to contempt for human life.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
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
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)
Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect -- like a man -- on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.
EDWARD ABBEY
Postcards from Ed
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.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Walking", The Journey Home
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
The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Shadows from the Big Woods", The Journey Home
The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
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
"Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night", The Journey Home
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
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
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
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