Quotes by Edward Abbey

• Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
• One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
• Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
• Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
• Say what you like about my bloody murderous government,' I says, 'but don't insult me poor bleedin' country.
• For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
• May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
• Grown men do not need leaders.
• Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
• If the end does not justify the means - what can?
• A drink a day keeps the shrink away.
• A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
• Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
• The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
• Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.
• You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.
• Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
• When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
• There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.
• The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
• That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.
• Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.
• 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.
• Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.
• What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
• Do not wait for leaders; do it eagerly, alone, person to person.