{
  "type": "quote",
  "site": {
    "name": "Leafy Quotes",
    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
  },
  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/i-understand-and",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/i-understand-and.json",
  "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/i-understand-and.md",
  "id": "01c64a1b-d744-4b49-acec-0a63694a7408",
  "slug": "i-understand-and",
  "text": "I understand and sympathize with the reasonable needs of a reasonable number of people on a finite continent. All life depends upon other life. But what is happening today, in North America, is not rational use but irrational massacre. Man the Pest, multiplied to the swarming stage, is attacking the remaining forests like a plague of locusts on a field of grain.",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Edward Abbey",
    "slug": "edward-abbey",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey"
  },
  "book": {
    "title": "The Journey Home",
    "slug": "the-journey-home",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home"
  },
  "character": null,
  "chapter": null,
  "chapter_parent": null,
  "page": 208,
  "verified": false,
  "original": null,
  "other_languages": [],
  "topics": [
    {
      "name": "ecology",
      "slug": "ecology",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology"
    }
  ],
  "source": {
    "name": "Wikiquote",
    "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#The_Journey_Home_(1977)",
    "license": {
      "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
      "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
    }
  },
  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:31",
  "more_from_book": [
    {
      "id": "d8ebc0d4-a1eb-4194-8b5d-be7ded768007",
      "slug": "one-wishes-to",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/one-wishes-to",
      "text": "One wishes to go on. On this great river one could glide forever — and here we discover the definition of bliss, salvation, Heaven, all the old Mediterranean dreams: a journey from wonder to wonder, drifting through eternity into ever-deeper, always changing grandeur, through beauty continually surpassing itself: the ultimate Homeric voyage.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 201,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "happiness",
          "slug": "happiness",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/happiness"
        },
        {
          "name": "travel",
          "slug": "travel",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/travel"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#The_Journey_Home_(1977)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:31"
    },
    {
      "id": "cc6ac63e-6d6f-49ae-85f0-41b6989ac0b4",
      "slug": "the-idea-of-wilderness",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/the-idea-of-wilderness",
      "text": "The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 223,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "nature",
          "slug": "nature",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/nature"
        },
        {
          "name": "ecology",
          "slug": "ecology",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#The_Journey_Home_(1977)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:31"
    },
    {
      "id": "c510f1f5-8011-4abb-82ef-e7f3e89360b2",
      "slug": "as-for-the",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/as-for-the",
      "text": "As for the \"solitary confinement of the mind,\" my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he's a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 121,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "humor",
          "slug": "humor",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/humor"
        },
        {
          "name": "philosophy",
          "slug": "philosophy",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/philosophy"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#The_Journey_Home_(1977)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
        }
      },
      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:47:31"
    }
  ]
}