All Edward Abbey Quotes
- Nothing can excel a few days in jail for giving a young man or woman a quick education in the basis of industrial society. Bases
- Our big social institutions do not reflect human nature; they distort it. Big
- You cannot reshape human nature without mutilating human beings. Beings
- In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority. Brave
- Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines. Account
- The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for… Bomber
- Filling out the form: Race? Human. Religion? Paiute. Occupation? Criminal anarchy. Hobbies? Survival with honor. Anarchy
- War? The one war I'd be happy to join is the war against officers. Happy
- In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military- industrial civilization will soon collapse. Affair
- The death penalty would be even more effective, as a deterrent, if we executed a few innocent people more often. Death
- I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a… Best
- Why I oppose the nuclear-arms race: I prefer the human race. Arms
- The world of employer and employee, like that of master and slave, debases both. Both
- 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,… Always Less
- Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth. Enemy
- Defiance is beautiful. The defiance of power, especially great or overwhelming power, exalts and glorifies the rebel. Beautiful
- If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's… Distinction
- Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful. Conservative
- King Arthur and his armored goons of the Round Table functioned as the Politburo of a slave state: Camelot. Of all who have written on… All
- Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom'. The word 'freedom' scares them; it has too much of a paleolithic ring to it. Contemporary
- One can imagine a sane, healthy, cheerful human society based on no more than the principles of common sense, as validated each day by work,… Based
- Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff. Chief
- Spartacus, like Jesus, was also crucified by the Romans. And for equally good reasons. Crucified
- J. Edgar Hoover, J. Bracken Lee, J. Parnell Thomas, J. Paul Getty -- you can always tell a shithead by that initial initial. Always Tell
- Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We… Best