Best 571 quotes of Edward Abbey on MyQuotes

Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.

A city man is a home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die.

A cowboy is a farm boy in leather britches and a comical hat.

A cowboy is a hired hand on the middle of a horse contemplating the hind end of a cow.

A critic is to an author as a fungus to an oak.

A drink a day keeps the shrink away.

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

A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.

A good writer must have more than vin rosé in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.

A house built on greed cannot long endure.

Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.

Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze.

A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.

All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.

All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.

All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?

All living things on earth are kindred.

All men are brothers, we like to say, half-wishing sometimes in secret it were not true. But perhaps it is true. And is the evolutionary line from protozoan to Spinoza any less certain? That also may be true. We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred.

All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.

All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.

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

All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.

A man is not aware of his virtues (if any). Nevertheless, one hopes that they exist.

A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.

A man's duty? To be ready -- with rifle or rood -- to defend his home when the showdown comes.

A man without passion would be like a body without a soul. Or even more grotesque, like a soul without a body.

Among politicians and businessmen, *Pragmatism* is the current term for 'To hell with our children.'

A mother's sorrow is more true, honorable, and beautiful than the detachment of the sage.

Anarchy works. Italy has proved it for a thousand years.

And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain.

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

Anton Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, trying to get it just right. He failed.

Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.

Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid.

Anywhere, anytime, I'd sacrifice the finest nuance for a laugh, the most elegant trope for a smile.

Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it!

A pretty girl can do no wrong.

Apuleius married a rich widow, then wrote _The Golden Ass_.

A rancher is a farmer who farms the public lands with a herd of four-legged lawn mowers.

Are people more important than the grizzly bear? Only from the point of view of some people.

Art, science, philosophy, religion -- each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience.

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.

As between the skulking and furtive poacher, who hunts for the sake of meat, and the honest gentleman shooter, who kills for the pleasure of sport, I find the former a higher type of humanity.

A shelf of classics for our young adults: Tolkien, Hesse, Casteneda, Kerouac, Salinger, Tom Robbins, and _The Last Whole Earth Catalog_.

As Mark Twain said, 'I love Wagner -- if only they'd cut out all that damned singing!'

A society that feels itself too poor to afford the preservation of wilderness is not worthy of the name civilization.

As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases.

A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.

At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, "thus far and no further." If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, "If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.