Edward Abbey Quotes: 10

• Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.

• May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view.

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

• Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.

• 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

• Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.

  Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

• 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

• 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.

• Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

  A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

• 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