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Ability
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Mildly talented in a variety of ways but with no genuine ability in any one field, she was like me, the perennial hapless self-amused dilettante, half-worried by the slippage of time but determined to enjoy failure anyway.
-Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian
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Atheism
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Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
-Edward Abbey
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Authors & Writing
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It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order.
But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver.
-Edward Abbey, Writer's Credo
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Growth
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Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
-Edward Abbey
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Nature
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I wish to be
an inspector of volcanoes.
I want to study cloud formations
and memorize the wind
and learn by heart the habits of
the ponderosa pine.
-Edward Abbey, Hayduke Lives
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Patriotism
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A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
-Edward Abbey
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Poetry
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I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick, dense, intense, complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood sweat; blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it.
-Edward Abbey
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Power
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Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so.
-Edward Abbey
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Simplicity
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I have enough money in the bank now to buy enough beans and rice for twenty-five years. To the end (sometimes longed for). Why not kidnap Suzy and sneak off to the life of a semi-hermit? A tempting, constantly tempting idea. ......
Peace. Simplicity. Order, ceremony and ritual. Voluntary poverty. An end to clutter and this vulgar, stifling, crushing burden of things
-Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian
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Society
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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.
-Edward Abbey
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Superstition
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We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism.
-Edward Abbey
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Teamwork
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One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork.
-Edward Abbey
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Time
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We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men.
-Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
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Tyranny
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No tyranny is so irksome as petty tyranny: the officious demands of policemen, government clerks, and electromechanical gadgets.
-Edward Abbey
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Walking
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That's the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn't matter much whether you get where you're going or not. You'll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home.
-Edward Abbey
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Wealth
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WEALTH AND HOW TO ACHIEVE IT:
Let us define the wealthy man as he who has everything he desires. How to reach that happy condition? Two ways
-Edward Abbey, Confessions of a Barbarian
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Wilderness
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Why wilderness? Because we like the taste of freedom; because we like the smell of danger.
-Edward Abbey, Beyond the Wall
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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.
-Edward Abbey
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Books by and about Edward Abbey