Democracy -- rule by the people -- sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Motherhood is an essential, difficult, and full-time job. Women who do not wish to be mothers should not have babies. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Writers should avoid the academy. When a writer begins to accept pay for talking about words, we know what he will produce… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Too many American authors have a servile streak where their backbone should be. Where's our latest Nobel laureate? More than likely you'll… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion,… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Wealth should come like manna from heaven, unearned and uncalled for. Money should be like grace -- a gift. It is not… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
A venturesome minority will always be eager to set off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path;… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Let the people walk. Or ride horses, bicycles, mules, wild pigs-anything-but keep the automobiles and the motorcycles and all their motorized relatives… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
We should restore the practice of dueling. It might improve manners around here. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
When the writer has done his best, he then should proceed to do his second best. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Everyone should learn a manual trade: It's never too late to become an honest person. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water… — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role. — Edward Abbey Copy Share Image
Those who dream of the joys of living in a space colony should live in a space colony. — 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
