“I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred 'great books' - and one brave deed is worth a thousand.” — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Except for the scale of the operation, there was nothing unusual about Hitler's massacre of the Jews. Genocide's an old tradition, as human as… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
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… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“But why, the questioner insists, why do people like you pretend to love uninhabited country so much? Why this cult of wilderness? Why the… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
“Me, I'm living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino's disease, which could lay me in the grave… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
