EDWARD ABBEY QUOTES III

American author (1927-1989)

Guns don't kill people; people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.

EDWARD ABBEY

Abbey's Road

Tags: guns


Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: violence


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


The desert rat carries one distinction like a halo: he has learned to love the kind of country that most people find unlovable.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside

Tags: desert


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

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang


The most attractive feature of Alaska, I say, is its small, insignificant human population.

EDWARD ABBEY

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside


One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Monkey Wrench Gang

Tags: stupidity, teamwork


Love is a disease. A social disease. A romantic, venereal, medieval disease. A hangover from the days of the fornicating troubadours and the gentlemen in iron britches.

EDWARD ABBEY

The Serpents of Paradise

Tags: love


Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am -- a reluctant enthusiast ... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.

EDWARD ABBEY

attributed, Saving Nature's Legacy


Contempt for animal life leads to contempt for human life.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: animals


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

EDWARD ABBEY

Abbey's Road


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


Anarchism is democracy taken seriously.

EDWARD ABBEY

One Life at a Time, Please

Tags: anarchy, democracy


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


The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: wit, tyranny


The tragedy of modern war is not so much that the young men die but that they die fighting each other--instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: war, death


Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.

EDWARD ABBEY

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

Tags: civilization, survival


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)

Tags: capitalism


When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

EDWARD ABBEY

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

Tags: dogs


All living things on earth are kindred.

EDWARD ABBEY

"Serpents of Paradise", Desert Solitaire

Tags: life