Edward Abbey Quotes

You said that you wanted to put us upon a reservation, to build our houses and make us medicine lodges. I do not want them. I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free, and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures, and where everything drew a free breath. I want to die there, and not within walls.

I was born where there were no enclosures.

Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don't fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love Don't fence me in Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees Send me off forever but I ask you please Don't fence me in

I've got to be by trees, otherwise I get claustrophobic.

Real freedom lies in wildness, not in civilization.

The land created me. I'm wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I'm more at home in the vacant lots.

I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences Don't fence me in

I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute Freedom and Wildness, as contrasted with a Freedom and Culture merely civil, - to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society.

What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps.

Oh, to live even for a day in the full light of freedom, to breathe the free air of simplicity! Isn't that the highest purity?

I will remember what I was, I am sick of rope and chains - I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs. I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugar cane; I will go out to my own kind, and the wood-folk in their lairs. I will go out until the day, until the morning break - Out to the wind's untainted kiss, the water's clean caress; I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket stake. I will revisit my lost love and playmates masterless!

The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.

Look at nature, work independently, and solve your own problems.

Disdain the chain, preserve your freedom; and maintain your independency: be industrious and free; be frugal and free.

Here was the freedom I desired, long sought-for, not yet known Freedom to write, to walk, to wander, freedom to climb hills, to pull a boat, to be alone.

We can try to kill all that is native, string it up by its hind legs for all to see, but spirit howls and wildness endures.

Only perhaps in the United States, which alone of countries can do without governing,every man being at least able to live, and move off into the wilderness, let Congress jargon as it will,can such a form of so-called Government continue for any length of time to torment men with the semblance, when the indispensable substance is not there.

There’s a limit to how much living can be done in a life without freedom.

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.

I was the sort of person who didn't care about hairdressing and clothes and parties and boyfriends. I really wanted to be in the wild.

Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?

There has always been a part of me that saw wilderness and risk-taking as the path to freedom.

I know it sounds very cliché and not very exciting, but if I'm outdoors - in the wild or the ocean or the forest - it inspires me.