Quote

What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.

Edward Abbey

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Edward Abbey
Age: 62 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 29
Died: 1989
Died: March 14
Author
Environmentalist
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Edward Paul Abbey
Inspiration
Purpose
Inspirational
Giant
Shade
Giants
Provide
Tiny
Tree

More quotes by Edward Abbey

Image
The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone - and to no one.
Edward Abbey
Image
My computer tells me that in twenty-five years there will be no more computers.
Edward Abbey
Image
Are people more important than the grizzly bear? Only from the point of view of some people.
Edward Abbey
Image
Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful.
Edward Abbey
Image
The response to my books from my East Coast friends has been wildly various, running the gamut from 'bad' to 'very bad.' (Is there another gamut?)
Edward Abbey
Image
Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.
Edward Abbey
Image
Nothing can excel a few days in jail for giving a young man or woman a quick education in the basis of industrial society.
Edward Abbey
Image
It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.
Edward Abbey
Image
The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.
Edward Abbey
Image
Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.
Edward Abbey
Image
Most new books drop immediately into the oblivion they so richly deserve.
Edward Abbey
Image
Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him he harms nobody and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.
Edward Abbey
Image
I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.
Edward Abbey
Image
In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.
Edward Abbey
Image
I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.
Edward Abbey
Image
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
Image
Why is it that the destruction of something created by humans is called vandalism, yet the destruction of something created by God is called development?
Edward Abbey
Image
Every moment is precious. And precarious.
Edward Abbey
Image
Music is a savage art, a measured madness.
Edward Abbey
Image
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.
Edward Abbey