Edward Abbey
A society that feels itself too poor to afford the preservation of wilderness is not worthy of the name civilization.Collection: Nature
Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.Collection: Philosophy
most of my wandering in the desert i've done alone. not so much from choice as from necessity - i generally prefer to go into places where no one else wants to go. i find that in contemplating the natural world my pleasure is greater if there are not too many others contemplating it with me, at the same time.Collection: Choices
All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.Collection: Dams
Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take up more space on a map than either.Collection: Texas
Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful.Collection: Powerful
The love of a man for his wife, his child, of the land where he lives and works, is for me the real meaning of mystical experience.Collection: Children
Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.Collection: Knowing
We know so very little about this strange planet we live on, this haunted world where all answers lead only to more mystery.Collection: Littles
It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.Collection: Good Life
Whenever I read _Time_ or _Newsweek_ or such magazines, I wash my hands afterward. But how to wash off the small but odious stain such reading leaves on the mind?Collection: Reading
Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier circles.Collection: Men
For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself.Collection: Mean
Romanticism was more than merely an alternative to a sterile classicism; romanticism made possible, especially in art, a great expansion of the human consciousness.Collection: Art
There comes a time in the life of us all when we must lay aside our books or put down our tools and leave our place of work and walk forth on the road to meet the enemy face-to-face. Once and for all and at lastCollection: Book
There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.Collection: Two
When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.Collection: Worry
The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining.Collection: Speaks Out
The absurd vanity of metaphysicians who like to imagine that they create the world by thinking about it.Collection: Thinking
it will be objected that a constantly increasing population makes resistance and conservation a hopeless battle. this is true. unless a way is found to stabilize the nation's population, the parks can not be saved. or anything else worth a damn. wilderness preservation, like a hundred other good causes, will be forgotten under the overwhelming pressure of a struggle for mere survival and sanity in a completely urbanized, completely industrialized, ever more crowded environment. for my own part i would rather take my chances in a thermonuclear war than live in such a world.Collection: War
Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface.Collection: Lakes
Congress is always willing to appropriate money for more and bigger paved roads, anywhere -- particularly if they form loops.Collection: Nature
Reply to Plato: I seen horses I seen cows I haint never yet seen horsiness nor that there bovinity neither.Collection: Horse
Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in the ghosts that haunt the human mind.Collection: Believe
Put the park rangers to work. Lazy scheming loafers, they've wasted too many years selling tickets at toll booths and sitting behind desks filling out charts and tablesCollection: Years
Anyone not paranoid in this world must be crazy. . . . Speaking of paranoia, it's true that I do not know exactly who my enemies are. But that of course is exactly why I'm paranoid.Collection: Crazy
Capitalism sounds good in theory but it just doesn't work.Collection: Sound
Passion, sexual passion, may lead to marriage, but cannot sustain marriage. The purpose of marriage is the raising of children, for which patience, not passion, is the necessary foundation.Collection: Children
My computer tells me that in twenty-five years there will be no more computers.Collection: Years
Nearly all of Latin America, from Chile to Mexico, is one long rack of torture. Financed, equipped, and refined by the U.S. government.Collection: Latin
The feminists have a legitimate grievance. But so does everyone else.Collection: Feminist
Art, science, philosophy, religion -- each offers at best only a crude simplification of actual living experience.Collection: Art
In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.Collection: People
Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.Collection: Art
Civilization, like an airplane in flight, survives only as it keeps going forward.Collection: Airplane
Going to bed with Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, or Margaret Thatcher: There are some things one prefers neither to do nor to have done.Collection: Bed
The author: an imaginary person who writes real books.Collection: Real
Beauty is only skin deep; ugliness goes all the way through.Collection: Skins
I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree.Collection: Rose
My books always make the best-seller lists in Wolf Hole, Arizona, and Hanksville, Utah.Collection: Book
Balance, that's the secret. Moderate extremism. The best of both worlds.Collection: Secret
Scientific method: There's a madness in the method.Collection: Scientific Method
In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.Collection: Philosophy
Within minutes my 115-mile walk through the desert hills becomes a thing apart, a disjunct reality on the far side of a bottomless abyss, immediately beyond physical recollection.But it's all still there in my heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days to come, like a treasure found and then, voluntarily, surrendered. Returned to the mountains with my blessing. It leaves a golden glowing on the mind.Collection: Pain
What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? 'Separate checks, please.'Collection: Jesus
A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.Collection: Doubt
I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.Collection: Night
When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.Collection: Fear