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.
But it is a writer’s duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.
Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
If it’s knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.
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.
Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.
As for writing, that’s a cruel hard business. Unless you’re very lucky it’ll break your heart.
What is the essence of the art of writing? Part One: Have something to say. Part Two: Say it well.
Certainly, I want to capture the reader’s attention from the beginning and hold it until the end: that is half the purpose of my art. The other half must be to tell my story in the most honest way that I can.
[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody’s typewriter, even Tolstoy’s, even yours, even mine.
The more we learn of outer space and inner space, of quasars and quarks, of Big Bangs and Little Blips, the more remote, abstract and intellectually inconsequential it all becomes.
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.
Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book’s eventual fate.
I would not sacrifice a single living mesquite tree for any book ever written. One square mile of living desert is worth a hundred ‘great books’ – and one brave deed is worth a thousand.
To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?
Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.
Our ‘neoconservatives’ are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.
Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.
In the land of bleating sheep and braying jackasses, one brave and honest man is bound to create a scandal.
And the so-called ‘political process’ is a fraud: Our elected officials, like our bureaucratic functionaries, like even our judges, are largely the indentured servants of the commercial interests.
If you hope for any sort of dialogue and unity with all factions on the vaguely leftist or radical side of politics, you must cease from silly verbal abuse. If you don’t want it, then we go on as we are, fractious and impotent.
All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.
You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.
What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.
Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.
Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.
Hard times are a-coming, and people without useful, practical skills are going to suffer. Or suffer most.
As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.
I am convinced now that the desert has no heart, that it presents a riddle which has no answer, and that the riddle itself is an illusion created by some limitation or exaggeration of the displaced human consciousness.
Poor Hayduke: won all his arguments but lost his immortal soul.
Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I’ve encountered some unnecessary resistance that’s because most of the traffic is going the other way.
People who think that love, sex, marriage, work, play, life and death are serious matters are urged NOT to read this book. Buy it, yes, but don’t read it. [Regarding “The Fool’s Progress”]
Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.
It’s a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true–nobody will ever take you seriously.
So I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally.
I hate and fear violence myself, have always avoided barroom brawls, and tho’ I’m a bit of a gun-nut, and a member of the NRA, I never shoot at anything but beer cans and mule deer. (In season.) And seldom hit either, except by accident.
And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain.
Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.
As to the charge that I am a cranky old man, I plead guilty.
But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest – next only to lust.
One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city — as I once did for a couple of years.
We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase ‘to live like men.
If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
There is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other – instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Belief in the supernatural reflects a failure of the imagination.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.
When a man’s best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.
One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.