Edward Abbey Quotations

I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.

I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.

The artist's job? To be a miracle worker: make the blind see, the dull feel, the dead to live....

We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.

All governments require enemy governments.

A writer must be hard to live with: when not working he is miserable, and when he is working he is obsessed.

A good philosopher is one who does not take ideas seriously.

The world is full of burled and gnarly knobs on which you can hang a metaphysical system. If you must.

The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.

The gurus come from the sickliest nation on earth to tell us how to live. And we pay them for it.