Ifs Quotes by Edward Abbey

To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.

— Edward Abbey

As Mark Twain said, 'I love Wagner -- if only they'd cut out all that damned singing!'

— Edward Abbey

One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word.

— Edward Abbey

I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long.

— Edward Abbey

A man is not aware of his virtues (if any). Nevertheless, one hopes that they exist.

— Edward Abbey

Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you've nothing better to do.

— Edward Abbey

If the world is irrational, we can never know it -- either it or its irrationality.

— Edward Abbey

Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.

— Edward Abbey

If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making…

— Edward Abbey

The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often.

— Edward Abbey

Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music.

— Edward Abbey

If you feel that you're not ready to die, never fear; nature will give you complete and adequate assistance when the time…

— Edward Abbey

The rich can buy everything but health, virtue, friendship, wit, good looks, love, pride, intelligence, grace, and, if you need it, happiness.

— Edward Abbey

Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.

— Edward Abbey

All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into…

— Edward Abbey

Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all…

— Edward Abbey

The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement…

— Edward Abbey

Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy,…

— Edward Abbey

Government: If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will…

— Edward Abbey

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion,…

— Edward Abbey

To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard…

— Edward Abbey

Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave…

— Edward Abbey

Let us hope our weapons are never needed - but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when…

— Edward Abbey

Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would…

— Edward Abbey

At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the…

— Edward Abbey

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…

— Edward Abbey

The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support…

— Edward Abbey

If there's anyone still present whom I've failed to insult . . . I apologize.

— Edward Abbey

If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.

— Edward Abbey

New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive…

— Edward Abbey

If there's anything I hate, it's the vibraphone. And the cha-cha-cha. And Latin rhythms generally.

— Edward Abbey

Alaska is our biggest, buggiest, boggiest state. Texas remains our largest unfrozen state. But mountainous Utah, if ironed out flat, would take…

— Edward Abbey

If we had the power of ten Shakespeares or a dozen Mozarts, we could not produce anything half so marvelous as one…

— Edward Abbey

It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.

— Edward Abbey

The world is full of burled and gnarly knobs on which you can hang a metaphysical system. If you must.

— Edward Abbey

It is an author's most solemn obligation to honor truth. If the free and independent writer does not speak truth to power,…

— Edward Abbey

If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your…

— Edward Abbey

If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You've…

— Edward Abbey

No man is wise enough to be another man's master. Each man's as good as the next -- if not a damn…

— Edward Abbey

It is not the writer's task to answer questions but to question answers. To be impertinent, insolent, and, if necessary, subversive.

— Edward Abbey