Edward Abbey

I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars.

I do not believe in personal immortality; it seems so unnecessary. Show me one man who deserves to live forever.

That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.

Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies.

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light.

Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.

I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

Our “neoconservatives” are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.

A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.

Government: If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.

Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.

Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation.

How could anything non-controversial be of intellectual interest to grown-ups?

In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.