No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets. – Edward Abbey
Why wilderness? Because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger. – Edward Abbey
We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there…. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope. – Edward Abbey
We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism. – Edward Abbey
Thats the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesnt matter much whether you get where youre going or not. Youll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. – Edward Abbey
Mildly talented in a variety of ways but with no genuine ability in any one field, she was like me, the perennial hapless self-amused dilettante, half-worried by the slippage of time but determined to enjoy failure anyway. – Edward Abbey
I wish to be an inspector of volcanoes. I want to study cloud formations and memorize the wind and learn by heart the habits of the ponderosa pine. – Edward Abbey
WEALTH AND HOW TO ACHIEVE IT: Let us define the wealthy man as he who has everything he desires. How to reach that happy condition? Two ways – Edward Abbey
We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men. – Edward Abbey
I dont 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. – Edward Abbey
Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so. – Edward Abbey
Society is like a stew. If you dont stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top. – Edward Abbey
Say what you like about my bloody murderous government, I says, but dont insult me poor bleedin country. – Edward Abbey
When a mans best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem. – Edward Abbey
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there aint nothin can beat teamwork. – Edward Abbey
That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding. – Edward Abbey
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
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. – Edward Abbey
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination. – Edward Abbey
There is science, logic, reason there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California. – Edward Abbey
