Edward Abbey
I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.Collection: Way
Metaphysics is a cobweb that the mind weaves around things.Collection: Mind
I'm a humanist; I'd rather kill a man than a snake.Collection: Men
Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze.Collection: Law
Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues.Collection: School
I now find the most marvelous things in the everyday, the ordinary, the common, the simple and tangible.Collection: Simple
The result of this bestial lust is an indiscriminate and promiscuous splaying of all of my energies- wanting all, I accomplish nothing; desiring everything, I satisfy nothing and am satisfied by nothing.Collection: Accomplish Nothing
The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all.Collection: Life Is
Rocks, like louseworts and snail darters and pupfish and 3rdworld black, lesbian, feminist, militant poets, have rights, too. Especially the right to exist.Collection: Rights
The national parks belong to everyone. To the people. To all of us. The government keeps saying so and maybe, in this one case at least, the government is telling the truth. Hard to believe, but possible.Collection: Believe
Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland.Collection: Beautiful
A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.Collection: Crowded
My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'Collection: Aunt
The only thing left worth saving is wilderness.Collection: Saving
When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.Collection: Towns
James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.Collection: Tombstone
Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it!Collection: Reality
Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.Collection: Suicide
The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.Collection: Nature
Cowboys make better lovers: Ask any cow.Collection: Cowboy
The canyon country does not always inspire love. To many it appears barren, hostile, repellent - a fearsome mostly waterless land of rock and heat, sand dunes and quicksand, cactus, thornbrush, scorpion, rattlesnake, and agaraphobic distances. To those who see our land in that manner, the best reply is, yes, you are right, it is a dangerous and terrible place. Enter at your own risk. Carry water. Avoid the noonday sun. Try to ignore the vultures. Pray frequently.Collection: Country
Wilderness begins in the human mind.Collection: Mind
The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art; and (2) sedition.Collection: Art
In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military- industrial civilization will soon collapse.Collection: Military
My cousin Elroy spent seven years as an IBM taper staring at THINK signs on the walls before he finally got a good idea: He quit.Collection: Cousin
I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore.Collection: Hero
Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation.Collection: Mean
If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You've only missed out on one half of life.Collection: Running
If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's Germany and Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.Collection: Lying
No man-made structure in all of American history has been hated so much, by so many, for so long, with such good reason, as that Glen Canyon Dam at Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital of Coconino County.Collection: Men
The world exists for its own sake, not for ours. Swallow *that* pill!Collection: Pills
The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.Collection: College
Tee Vee football: one team wins, one team loses -- they tie -- who cares? And why?Collection: Football
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 -- a Mongoloid metaphysic.Collection: Two
Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.Collection: Wise
I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.Collection: Confused
Why I oppose the nuclear-arms race: I prefer the human race.Collection: Race
This world may be only illusion -- but it's the only illusion we've got.Collection: World
The nuclear bomb took all the fun out of war.Collection: Fun
Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God; this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.Collection: Positive
The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.Collection: Fantastic
Every important change in our society, for the good, at least, has taken place because of popular pressure-pressure from below, from the great mass of people.Collection: Taken
As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases.Collection: War
We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foresight of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement.Collection: Dream
We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, and trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails; all of them, all of us. Long live diversity, long live the earth!Collection: Journey
The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer."Collection: Military
Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.Collection: Christian