Edward Abbey quotes

" A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. " # Patriotism # Government # Politicians and Politics

" Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. " # Atheism # Failure # Belief

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

" The distrust of wit is the beginning of tyranny. " # Tyranny

" Freedom begins between the ears. " # Freedom

" One final paragraph of advice: 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. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards. " # Love

" Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell. " # Growth # Freedom # Power

" This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome — there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. " # Cities and City Life

" Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second. (p. 81) " # Taste

" No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets. " # New World # Government # Tyranny