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Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 22

All Quotes Adventure Age Anarchy Appearance Army Art Atheism Atheist Beer Belief Business Challenges Character Children Coffee Common Sense Communication Country Critics Culture Democracy Desire Doubt Duty Dying Earth Evil Fate Fear Football Freedom Fun Funny Giving Grace Greed Growth Guru Hate Heart Heaven Hell Home Honor Human Nature Ideology Inspirational Jesus Journey Joy Laughter Liberty Life Love Lying Madness Metaphysics Military Nature Pain Passion Peace Philosophy Police Positive Pride Purpose Rain Reading Reality Regret Revolution Revolver Risk Running School Seven Silence Simplicity Sin Solitude Soul Sports Study Stupidity Suffering Survival Taxes Technology Terrorism Theology Tragedy Travel Virtue Waiting Wall Water Wilderness Wit Writing

Terrorism: deadly violence against humans and other living things, usually conducted by government against its own people.

Terrorism: deadly violence against humans and other living things, usually conducted by government against its own people.

Government, People, Violence

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.22, RosettaBooks

King Arthur and his armored goons of the Round Table functioned as the Politburo of a slave state: Camelot. Of all who have written on the Matter of Arthur, from Malory to White, only Mark Twain understood this. But Mark Twain was a great writer.

Kings, White, Tables

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.21, RosettaBooks

To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

Forever, Ask Me, Asks

"The Journey Home : Some Words in Defense of the American West" by Edward Abbey, (p. 205), 1977.

Three words remain that can yet stir the blood of man: the word 'rebellion'; the word 'revolt'; the word 'revolution'.

Men, Blood, Three

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.23, RosettaBooks

Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part in the health of their communities, opposing what is evil (in one way or another) and defending what is good. Heroes do not want power over others.

Hero, People, Evil

"Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast".

Filling out the form: Race? Human. Religion? Paiute. Occupation? Criminal anarchy. Hobbies? Survival with honor.

Race, Survival, Honor

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.20, RosettaBooks

To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?

Dad, Fear, Smell

edward abbey (1976). “the monkey wrench gang”

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.

Stars, Flower, Sleep

Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick, dense, intense, complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood sweat; blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it.

Real, Blood, Sweat

Edward Abbey, David Petersen (2003). “Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey”, p.39, Big Earth Publishing

I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.

Men, Numbers, America

"The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West". Book by Edward Abbey ("The Crooked Wood", p. 208), 1977.

A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed.

Miserable, Obsessed, Hard

Edward Abbey (2006). “Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast”

I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.

Technology, Eagles, Ravens

Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.164, Macmillan

Put the park rangers to work. Lazy scheming loafers, they've wasted too many years selling tickets at toll booths and sitting behind desks filling out charts and tables

Years, Lazy, Sitting

Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.52, University of Arizona Press

The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.

People, Would Be, Death Penalty

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.20, RosettaBooks

Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface.

Lakes, Hands, Sea

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.38, RosettaBooks

In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.

People, Church, Students

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.20, RosettaBooks

We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire—a crackpot machine—that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees. …Edward Abbey (1927-1989)

Survival, Machines, World

Life is cruel? Compared to what?

Life Is

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.26, RosettaBooks

What we need now are heroes and heroines, about a million of them, one brave deed is worth a thousand books. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Book, Hero, Brave

Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.15, Macmillan

I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.

Communication, Race, Ideas

Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.7, University of Arizona Press

Going to bed with Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, or Margaret Thatcher: There are some things one prefers neither to do nor to have done.

Bed, Gertrude, Done

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.38, RosettaBooks

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.

Sea, Critics, Rail

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.30, RosettaBooks

Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times.

Beautiful, Writing, Silence

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.32, RosettaBooks

There comes a point, in literary objectivity, when the author's self- effacement is hard to distinguish from moral cowardice.

Self, Objectivity, Moral

In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.

Writing, Facts, Fidelity

Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.30, RosettaBooks

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