10 Edward Abbey Quotes on Wilderness

Edward Abbey quotes on wilderness

1. My job is to save the fucking wilderness. I don't know anything else worth saving.

11. I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. (Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!)

17. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may not ever need to go there.

18. To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.

23. The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.

25. When I write 'paradise' I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.

26. Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.

30. I would give ten years off the beginning of my life to see, only once, Tyrannosaurus rex come rearing up from the elms of Central Park, a Morgan police horse screaming in its jaws. We can never have enough of nature.

50. I come more and more to the conclusion that wilderness, in America or anywhere else, is the only thing left that is worth saving.

51. If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.