Quotes from Edward Abbey

Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.

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

The longest journey begins with a single step, not with a turn of the ignition key.

Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement—mating season.

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialistic, otherworldly, New Age spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu and seaweed slime.

What ideal, immutable Platonic cloud could equal the beauty and perfection of any ordinary everyday cloud floating over, say, Tuba City, Arizona, on a hot day in June?

Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers-- obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.

No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.

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

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

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

Be loyal to what you love, be true to the earth, fight your enemies with passion and laughter.

There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

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

Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

I stand for what I stand on.

When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.

The one thing ... that is truly ugly is the climate of hate and intimidation, created by a noisy few, which makes the decent majority reluctant to air in public their views on anything controversial. ... Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.

Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.

I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that's patrotism.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.