Edward Abbey

You cannot reshape human nature without mutilating human beings.

War: First day in the U.S. Army, the government placed a Bible in my left hand, a bayonet in the other.

Democracy -- rule by the people -- sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America.

This world may be only illusion -- but it's the only illusion we've got.

Only a fool is astonished by the foolishness of mankind.

Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.

If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.

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. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.

Without courage, all other virtues are useless.

The function of an ideal is not to be realized but, like that of the North_x000D_ Star, to serve as a guiding point.

Life is unfair. And it's not fair that life is unfair.

In the first place you can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll begin to see something, maybe. Probably not.

Why must love always be accompanied--sooner or later--by sorrow and pain? Why not? Because pure bliss is for pure idiots.

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

Of all the featherless beasts, only man, chained by his self-imposed slavery to the clock, denies the elemental fire and proceeds as best he can about his business, suffering quietly, martyr to his madness. Much to learn.

A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.

Come with me, the river said, close your eyes and quiet your limbs and float with me into the wonder and mystery of the canyons, see the unknown and the little known, look upon the stone gods face to face, see Medusa, drink my waters, hear my song, feel my power, come along and drift with me toward the distant, ultimate and legendary sea.

Climbing K2 or floating the Grand Canyon in an inner tube; there are some things one would rather have done than do.

Nature is indifferent to our love, but never unfaithful.

The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.

Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.