Edward Abbey (1927 – 1989)
American writer noted for his advocacy of environmental issues and criticism of public land policies.
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.
I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.
In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority.
Freedom begins between the ears.
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.
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.
Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.
Among politicians and businessman, Pragmatism is the current term for "To hell with our children."
He recalled Dr. Sarvis' favorite apothegm: When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
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.
Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
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.
The "Terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
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.
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.
With the neutron bomb, which destroys life but not property, capitalism has found the weapon of its dreams.
We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foresight of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement.
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. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated and anyone can transport himself anywhere, instantly. Big deal, Buckminster. To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.