American author (1927-1989)
Money attracts because it gives us the means to command the labor and service and finally the lives of others--human or otherwise.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
At that moment I was ready to forsake my other home, forsake my mother and father and little sister and all my friends, and spend the rest of my life in the desert eating cactus for lunch, drinking blood at cocktail time, and letting the ferocious sun flay me skin and soul. I'd gladly have traded parents, school, a college education and a career for one dependable saddle hourse. Later that night, of course, alone in bed, the deadly homesickness would strike me faint.
EDWARD ABBEY
Fire on the Mountain
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
EDWARD ABBEY
Down the River
A cowboy is a hired hand on the middle of a horse contemplating the hind end of a cow.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Water", Desert Solitaire
A pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.
EDWARD ABBEY
Hayduke Lives
I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire
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)
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
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)
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
Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
All gold is fool's gold.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Oh! For love, for the painfully nourished, tenderly cherished, sweet frenzies illusion, the known-illusion within the globule of sentimental cynicism. For romantic love, then, I sacrifice honor, decensy, human kindness, charity, honesty, friendship and the future -- all, (ah!) for love!
EDWARD ABBEY
The Serpents of Paradise
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)
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Journey Home
The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Shadows from the Big Woods", The Journey Home