Edward Abbey Quotes

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

And you shall take no bribe; for the bribe blinds the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous:

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

As long as dishonorable success outranks honest effort—as long as society bows and cringes before the great thieves, there will be little ones enough to fill the jails.

Do not take bribes, for they blind the clear-eyed and upset the pleas of the just.

There is something wrong in a government where they who do the most have the least. There is something wrong when honesty wears a rag, and rascality a robe; when the loving, the tender, eat a crust, while the infamous sit at banquets.

The chief agent responsible for promoting the passions at the expense of justice turns out to be wealth.

Politics is so corrupt that even the dishonest people get fucked.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, was above corruption so long as human beings were involved.

Greed is at the bottom of most of the wrong-doing with which government has to deal.

The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong.

Morality is a venereal disease. Its primary stage is called virtue; its secondary stage, boredom; its tertiary stage, syphilis.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

Corruption exists everywhere.

The surest way to remain poor is to be an honest man.

For there is no defense for a man who, in the excess of his wealth, has kicked the great altar of Justice out of sight.

Politics ruins the character.

Corruption never has been compulsory.

All those men have their price.

It is not human nature we should accuse but the despicable conventions that pervert it.

The pride of life hath corrupted the judgment of others, and perverted them in the way of religion.

The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality

The moral fiber of the American people is beset by rot and decay

He who thinks that anything can be accomplished with money will himself likely to do anything for money.