At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour.
– Edward Abbey

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.
– Edward Abbey

The plow has probably done more harm – in the long run – than the sword.
– Edward Abbey

The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information.
– Edward Abbey

The rancher strings barbed wire across the range, drills wells and bulldozes stock ponds everywhere, drives off the elk and antelope and bighorn sheep, poisons coyotes and prairie dogs, shoots eagle and bear and cougar on sight, supplants the native bluestem and grama grass with tumbleweed, cow shit, cheat grass, snakeweed, anthills, poverty weed, mud and dust and flies – and then leans back and smiles broadly at the Tee Vee cameras and tells us how much he loves the West.
– Edward Abbey

The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
– Edward Abbey

If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
– Edward Abbey

When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
– Edward Abbey

I’m in favor of animal liberation. Why? Because I’m an animal.
– Edward Abbey

From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.
– Edward Abbey

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.
– Edward Abbey

The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.
– Edward Abbey

The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.
– Edward Abbey

The industrial corporation is the natural enemy of nature.
– Edward Abbey

In social affairs, I’m an optimist. I really do believe that our military-industrial civilization will soon collapse.
– Edward Abbey

We live in a society in which it is normal to be sick; and sick to be abnormal.
– Edward Abbey

Science is the whore of industry and the handmaiden of war.
– Edward Abbey

The mad scientist was once only a creature of gothic romance; now he is everywhere, busy torturing atoms and animals in his laboratory.
– Edward Abbey

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a thousand books.
– Edward Abbey

Freedom begins between the ears.
– Edward Abbey

Truth is always the enemy of power. And power the enemy of truth.
– Edward Abbey

The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art; and (2) sedition.
– Edward Abbey

The rebel is doomed to a violent death. The rest of us can look forward to sedated expiration in a coma inside an oxygen tent, with tubes inserted in every bodily orifice.
– Edward Abbey

Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
– Edward Abbey

Beware of the man who has no enemies.
– Edward Abbey

The greater your dreams, the more terrible your nightmares.
– Edward Abbey

Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.
– Edward Abbey