Steve Murray > Steve's Quotes

“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

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
― Edward Abbey

“Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”
― Edward Abbey

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
― Edward Abbey, The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

“How to Overthrow the System: brew your own beer; kick in your Tee Vee; kill your own beef; build your own cabin and piss off the front porch whenever you bloody well feel like it.”
― Edward Abbey

“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Edward Abbey

“Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.”
― Edward Abbey

“Freedom begins between the ears.”
― Edward Abbey

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.”
― Edward Abbey

“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.”
― Edward Abbey

“The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals. ”
― Edward Abbey

“A drink a day keeps the shrink away.”
― Edward Abbey

“Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.”
― Edward Abbey

“I despise my own nation most. Because I know it best. Because I still love it, suffering from Hope. For me, that's patrotism.”
― Edward Abbey, The Serpents of Paradise: A Reader

“I stand for what I stand on.”
― Edward Abbey

“If my decomposing carcass helps nourish the roots of a juniper tree or the wings of a vulture—that is immortality enough for me. And as much as anyone deserves.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in. ”
― Edward Abbey

“The rifle and handgun are 'equalizers' -- the weapons of a democracy. Tanks and bombers represent dictatorship.”
― Edward Abbey

“We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire—a crackpot machine—that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate. We are, most of us, dependent employees. …Edward Abbey (1927-1989) ”
― Edward Abbey

“If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“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 government, his own culture. The more freedom the writer possesses, the greater the moral obligation to play the role of critic.”
― Edward Abbey

“Industrial tourism is a threat to the national parks. But the chief victims of the system are the motorized tourists. They are being robbed and robbing themselves. So long as they are unwilling to crawl out of their cars they will not discover the treasures of the national parks and will never escape the stress and turmoil of the urban-suburban complexes which they had hoped, presumably, to leave behind for a while.”
― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

“the wilderness should be preserved for political reasons. We may need it someday not only as a refuge from excessive industrialism but also as a refuge from authoritarian government, from political oppression. Grand Canyon, Big Bend, Yellowstone, and the High Sierras may be required to function as bases for guerrilla warfare against tyranny...The value of wilderness, on the other hand, as a base for resistance to centralized domination is demonstrated by recent history. In Budapest and Santo Domingo, for example, popular revolts were easily and quickly crushed because an urbanized environment gives the advantage to the power with technological equipment. But in Cuba, Algeria, and Vietnam the revolutionaries, operating in mountain, desert, and jungle hinterlands with the active or tacit support of a thinly dispersed population, have been able to overcome or at least fight to a draw official establishment forces equipped with all of the terrible weapons of twentieth century militarism.”
― Edward Abbey

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

“God bless America. Let's try to save some of it.”
― Edward Abbey

“High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring”
― Edward Abbey

“In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

“Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.”
― Edward Abbey

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

“When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.”
― Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast