American author (1927-1989)
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.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Walking", The Journey Home
There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Gather at the River", Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect -- like a man -- on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.
EDWARD ABBEY
Postcards from Ed
What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
Where life is there is death, reasons the vulture, and where there's death there's hope.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
Everyone should learn a manual trade. It's never too late to become an honest person.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The First Morning", Desert Solitaire
Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our anti-materialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely an illusion, an honest guru should be as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
EDWARD ABBEY
Down the River
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
The desert rat carries one distinction like a halo: he has learned to love the kind of country that most people find unlovable.
EDWARD ABBEY
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside
The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Shadows from the Big Woods", The Journey Home
To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", Desert Solitaire
We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
EDWARD ABBEY
Abbey's Road
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto)
Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.
EDWARD ABBEY
The Monkey Wrench Gang
Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.
EDWARD ABBEY
"The Crooked Wood", The Journey Home