Edward Abbey Quotes That Will Inspire You to Live Your Best Life

1. Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.

2. Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

3. But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended. Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

4. If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose. Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

5. 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 in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to set foot in it. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope; without it the life of the cities would drive all men into crime or drugs or psychoanalysis. Desert Solitaire

6. 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. Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

7. Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp. Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

8. The more we learn of outer space and inner space, of quasars and quarks, of Big Bangs and Little Blips, the more remote, abstract and intellectually inconsequential it all becomes. Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

9. This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of man. Desert Solitaire

10. 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.