Quotes from Edward Abbey

We judge individual man and women as we do nations and races -- by the character of their achievement and by their achievement of character.

For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself.

All serious writers want the obvious rewards: fame, money, women, love -- and most of all, an audience!

Little boys love machines; girls adore horses; grown-up men and women like to walk.

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

If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.

The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space.

God bless America. Let's save some of it.

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

I have found through trial and error that I work best under duress. In fact I work only under duress.

Science transcends mere politics. As recent history demonstrates, scientists are as willing to work for a Tojo, a Hitler, or a Stalin as for the free nations of the West.

The world of employer and employee, like that of master and slave, debases both.

James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.

In the end, for all our differences and conflicts, most women and men share the same food, work, shelter, bed, life, joy, anguish, and fate. We need each other.

Capitalism sounds good in theory but it just doesn't work.

In both metaphysics and art, honesty is the best policy. Keep it clean.

In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be.

There is a fine art to making enemies and it requires diligent cultivation. It's not as easy as it looks.

Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words.

Music is a savage art, a measured madness.

How did Haydn and Mozart produce such vast quantities of formally perfect art? They worked from a perfect formula. In music, Beethoven was the Great Emancipator.

Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.

There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.

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?