EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES III

American author (1927-1989)

Growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Water", Desert Solitaire

Tags: growth


We like the taste of freedom ... because we like the smell of danger.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: freedom


We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.

EDWARD ABBEY

Abbey's Road


Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)

Tags: newspapers


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)


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)

Tags: tyranny


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)

Tags: work


The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: wit, tyranny


Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: society


I love your letters. How far is that from saying I love you? Well--about a mile. Two miles.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: love


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

Tags: love


The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Manhattan Twilight, Hoboken Night", The Journey Home

Tags: cities


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Journey Home

Tags: growth


In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.

EDWARD ABBEY

Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Tags: scandal


Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect -- like a man -- on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.

EDWARD ABBEY

Postcards from Ed

Tags: walking


Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: anarchy, democracy


Contempt for animal life leads to contempt for human life.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: animals


Love can defeat that nameless terror. Loving one another, we take the sting from death.

EDWARD ABBEY

Down the River

Tags: love


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

EDWARD ABBEY

Down the River

Tags: coffee


A great thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Water", Desert Solitaire