Quotes By Edward Abbey

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

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

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.

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

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

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

What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

Grown men do not need leaders.

There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.

Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.

Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.

Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.

If the end does not justify the means - what can?

Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.

That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.

Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.

Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.

One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.