Edward Abbey Quotes

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, general...

There is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right.

As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.

To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down...

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

The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

What we need now are heroes and heroines, about a million of them, one brave deed is worth a thousand books. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

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

Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

Grown men do not need leaders.

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

A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed. Or so it is with me. Thus my writing life consists of spells of languor alternating with fi...

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

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

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

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!

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

An empty man is full of himself.

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.