In this respect the differences between the USA and the USSR are those of evangelical dinosaurs competing for domination on one small planet: the first deifies Jesus Christ, the other Karl Marx. Neither has much...

I believe that the military-industrial state will eventually collapse, possibly even in our lifetime, and that a majority of us (if prepared) will muddle through to a freer, more open, less crowded, green and spacious...

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

Abolition of a woman’s right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.

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...

All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.

Should a writer have a social purpose? Any honest writer is bound to become a critic of the society he lives in, and sometimes, like Mark Twain or Kurt Vonnegut or Leo Tolstoy or Francois...

Money confers the power to command the labor of others. Love of money is love of power. And love of power is the root of evil.

One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living...

Me, I’m living under a sword too, as Jack may have told you. An old wino’s disease, which could lay me in the grave most anytime. Not that I mind too much; I’ve done everything...

My loyalties will not be bound by national borders, or confined in time by one nation’s history, or limited in the spiritual dimension by one language and culture. I pledge my allegiance to the damned...

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

The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.

Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.

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

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

There is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right.

The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only...

How become a writer? Naturally.

God still sits on the throne, the devil is a liar. You may be goingthrough a tough time right now but God is getting ready to bless youin a way that only He can. Keep...

A house built on greed cannot long endure.

I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don’t believe in happy endings is because I don’t believe in endings.

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.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university...

What we need now are heroes and heroines, about a million of them, one brave deed is worth a thousand books. Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.

Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.

Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.

Most every charge you level at American capitalism applies with equal force to communism, with this nice difference, that the Reds make no pretense at such frivolities as civil liberties or environmentalism. The differences in...

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

[I]t is the writer’s duty to write fiction which promotes virtue, the good, the beautiful, and above all, the true. … It is the writer’s duty to hate injustice, to defy the powerful, and to...

[Abbey lives! Sierra Club Books recently reissued] The Best of Edward Abbey, … The Monkey Wrench Gang.

The children are innocent until proven guilty. For their sake, not ours, we must soldier on, muddling our way toward frugality, simplicity, liberty, community, until some kind of sane and rational balance is achieved between...

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

I suppose each of us has his own fantasy of how he wants to die. I would like to go out in a blaze of glory, myself, or maybe simply disappear someday, far out in...

Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.

We are kindred all of us, … killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our...

To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?

There is a certain animal vitality in most of us which carries us through any trouble but the absolutely overwhelming. Only a fool has no sorrow, only an idiot has no grief – but then...

Taxation: how the sheep are shorn.

It’s a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true–nobody will ever take you seriously.

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

A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot...

Water, water, water….There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among...

Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.

For there is a cloud on my horizon. A small dark cloud no bigger than my hand. Its name is Progress.

Yes, there are plenty of heroes and heroines everywhere you look. They are not famous people. They are generally obscure and modest people doing useful work, keeping their families together and taking an active part...

As for writing, that’s a cruel hard business. Unless you’re very lucky it’ll break your heart.