Top 500 Edward Abbey Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “The feminist notion that the whole of human history has been nothing but a vast intricate conspiracy by men to enslave their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters presents us with an intellectual neurosis for which we do not yet have a name.”

— Edward Abbey

202. “The rifle and handgun are ‘equalizers’ – the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.”

— Edward Abbey

203. “The ideal kitchen-sink novel: Throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Then add the kitchen sink.”

— Edward Abbey

204. “Suicide: Don’t knock it if you ain’t tried it.”

— Edward Abbey

205. “Great art is indefinable but that’s all right; it exists anyway.”

— Edward Abbey

206. “When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.”

— Edward Abbey

207. “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.”

— Edward Abbey

208. “If we had the power of ten Shakespeares or a dozen Mozarts, we could not produce anything half so marvelous as one ordinary human child.”

— Edward Abbey

209. “We spend more time working for our labor-saving machines than they do working for us.”

— Edward Abbey

210. “Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.”

— Edward Abbey

211. “But it is a writer’s duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.”

— Edward Abbey

212. “All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?”

— Edward Abbey

213. “Terrorism: deadly violence against humans and other living things, usually conducted by government against its own people.”

— Edward Abbey

214. “Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.”

— Edward Abbey

215. “In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political – especially that which pretends not to be.”

— Edward Abbey

216. “My computer tells me that in twenty-five years there will be no more computers.”

— Edward Abbey

217. “Humility is a virtue when you have no other.”

— Edward Abbey

218. “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. I may never in my life get to Alaska, for example, but I am grateful that it’s there. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis.”

— Edward Abbey

219. “Christian theology: nothing so grotesque could possibly be true.”

— Edward Abbey

220. “The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow.”

— Edward Abbey

221. “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.”

— Edward Abbey

222. “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.”

— Edward Abbey

223. “Life: another day, another dolor.”

— Edward Abbey

224. “Romanticism was more than merely an alternative to a sterile classicism; romanticism made possible, especially in art, a great expansion of the human consciousness.”

— Edward Abbey

225. “There is a wine called Easy Days and Mellow Nights, well-known on the outskirts of the Navajo reservation. It is an economical wine, fortified with the best of intentions, and I recommend it to every serious wino.”

— Edward Abbey

226. “I thought I was wrong once,” Seldom said, “but I found out later I was mistaken.”

— Edward Abbey

227. “Nature is indifferent to our love, but never unfaithful.”

— Edward Abbey

228. “But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest – next only to lust.”

— Edward Abbey

229. “Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times.”

— Edward Abbey

230. “One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city – as I once did for a couple of years.”

— Edward Abbey

231. “Writing on the wall: Will trade three blind crabs for two with no teeth.”

— Edward Abbey

232. “If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument.”

— Edward Abbey

233. “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.”

— Edward Abbey

234. “There are some places so beautiful they can make a grown man break down and weep.”

— Edward Abbey

235. “Girls, like flowers, bloom but once. But once is enough.”

— Edward Abbey

236. “Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama’s lap from alcohol and infantilism.”

— Edward Abbey

237. “Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness.”

— Edward Abbey

238. “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.”

— Edward Abbey

239. “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.”

— Edward Abbey

240. “The best argument for Christianity is the Gregorian chant. Listening to that music, one can believe anything – while the music lasts.”

— Edward Abbey

241. “In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.”

— Edward Abbey

242. “Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him; he harms nobody; and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.”

— Edward Abbey

243. “All living things on earth are kindred.”

— Edward Abbey

244. “By the age of forty, a man is responsible for his face. And his fate.”

— Edward Abbey

245. “Chastity is more a state of mind than of anatomy.”

— Edward Abbey

246. “A city man is a home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die.”

— Edward Abbey

247. “The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is one of life’s basic consolations.”

— Edward Abbey

248. “Belief in God? An afterlife? I believe in rock: this apodictic rock beneath my feet.”

— Edward Abbey

249. “Money confers the power to command the labor of others. Love of money is love of power. And love of power is the root of evil.”

— Edward Abbey

250. “What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? ‘Separate checks, please.’”

— Edward Abbey