Top 500 Edward Abbey Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “The rifle and handgun are ‘equalizers’ – the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.”

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

205. “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

206. “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

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

209. “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

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

212. “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

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

217. “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

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

220. “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

221. “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

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

— Edward Abbey

223. “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

224. “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

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

228. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

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

— Edward Abbey

235. “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

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. “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

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

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

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey

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

— 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. “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

249. “Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.”

— Edward Abbey

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

— Edward Abbey