"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Terrorism: deadly violence against humans and other living things, usually conducted by government against its own people."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Filling out the form: Race? Human. Religion? Paiute. Occupation? Criminal anarchy. Hobbies? Survival with honor."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Truth is merely common sense, say the naive realist. Really? Then where, precisely, is the location of— a rainbow? In the air? In the eye? In between? Or somewhere else?"
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"If someone tells you he is a solipsist, throw a rock at his head. If he ducks, he is a liar."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"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."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"The one thing both conservatives and liberals, left and right wingers, HATE, is a free-thinker, a nonconformist. From either side. Unless you subscribe in every detail to one doctrine or the other, you will be denounced."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"War: First day in the U.S. Army, the government placed a Bible in my left hand, a bayonet in the other."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“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.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“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.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
“The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals. ”
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Why is it that the destruction of something created by humans is called vandalism, yet the destruction of something created by God is called development?"
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"An empty man is full of himself."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
"Quantum mechanics provides us with an approximate, plausible, conjectural explanation of what actually is, or was, or may be taking place inside a cyclotron during a dark night in February."
—Edward Abbey (1927-1989)