Edward Abbey Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The purpose of love, sex, and marriage is the production and raising of children. But look about you: Most people have no business having children. They are unqualified, either genetically or culturally or both, to reproduce such sorry specimens as themselves. Of all our privileges, the license to breed is the one most grossly abused.

  Edward Abbey

  Sex, Children, Sorry

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.44, RosettaBooks

  26 Copy quote

• Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.

  Edward Abbey

  Animal, Hunting, Moral

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

  19 Copy quote

• America My Country: last nation on earth to abolish human slavery; first of all nations to drop the nuclear bomb on our fellow human beings.

  Edward Abbey

  Country, America, Slavery

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.56, RosettaBooks

  5 Copy quote

• Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

  Edward Abbey

  Truth, Delusion, Comfortable

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.13, RosettaBooks

  16 Copy quote

• There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.

  Edward Abbey

  Stupidity, Greed, World

  "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal". Book by Edward Abbey (Chapter 11 "Money Et Cetera", p. 100), 1989.

  15 Copy quote

• Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.

  Edward Abbey

  Desert

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.10, RosettaBooks

  7 Copy quote

• Freedom begins between the ears.

  Edward Abbey

  Freedom, Liberty, Ears

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

  14 Copy quote

• Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are -- retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.

  Edward Abbey

  Football, Player, Games

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

  21 Copy quote

• Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy.

  Edward Abbey

  Night, Rivers, Space

  30 Copy quote

• Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

  Edward Abbey

  Power, Anarchy, Worst

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

  34 Copy quote

• A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.

  Edward Abbey

  Mean, Leader, Example

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

  26 Copy quote

• I’m tired of doing what I don’t want to do to live the way I don’t want to live.

  Edward Abbey

  Tired, Want, Way

  40 Copy quote

• There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.

  Edward Abbey

  Beauty Everywhere, Heartbreaking

  Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.153, Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Government, People, Broken

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

  21 Copy quote

• An empty man is full of himself.

  Edward Abbey

  Men, Empty

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.28, RosettaBooks

  15 Copy quote

• Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

  Edward Abbey

  Kings, Years, Realization

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.18, RosettaBooks

  69 Copy quote

• Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.

  Edward Abbey

  Life, Regret, Grief

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.28, RosettaBooks

  59 Copy quote

• How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.

  Edward Abbey

  Beer, Beef, Cabins

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

  45 Copy quote

• I have been called a curmudgeon, which my obsolescent dictionary defines as a "surly, illmannered, badtempered fellow." ... Nowadays, curmudgeon is likely to refer to anyone who hates hypocrisy, cant, sham, dogmatic ideologies, the pretenses and evasions of euphemism, and has the nerve to point out unpleasant facts and takes the trouble to impale these sins on the skewer of humor and roast them over the fires of empiric fact, common sense, and native intelligence. In this nation of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, it then becomes an honor to be labeled curmudgeon.

  Edward Abbey

  Hate, Fire, Sheep

  "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness".

  73 Copy quote

• I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.

  Edward Abbey

  Stars, Memorable, Night

  Edward Abbey (1988). “Desert Solitaire”, p.140, University of Arizona Press

  27 Copy quote

• The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.

  Edward Abbey

  Pads, Knee Jerk Reactions, Knees

  "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal". Book by Edward Abbey, 1989.

  61 Copy quote

• My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation's history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned human race, and my everlasting love to the green hills of Earth, and my intimations of glory to the singing stars, to the very end of space and time.

  Edward Abbey

  Love, Loyalty, Spiritual

  Edward Abbey, David Petersen (2003). “Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey”, p.92, Big Earth Publishing

  80 Copy quote

• There are some good things to be said about walking. Not many, but some. Walking takes longer, for example, than any other known form of locomotion except crawling. Thus it stretches time and prolongs life. Life is already too short to waste on speed. I have a friend who's always in a hurry; he never gets anywhere. Walking makes the world much bigger and thus more interesting. You have time to observe the details. The utopian technologists foresee a future for us in which distance is annihilated... To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

  Edward Abbey

  Distance, Interesting, Forever

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

  45 Copy quote

• If there's anyone still present whom I've failed to insult . . . I apologize.

  Edward Abbey

  Apologizing, Insult, I Apologize

  Edward Abbey (1988). “One Life at a Time, Please”, p.5, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

• If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies' territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers.

  Edward Abbey

  People, Territory, Facts

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.47, RosettaBooks

  30 Copy quote

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