# Quote — Edward Abbey, The Journey Home

> The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself — not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.

- Author: [Edward Abbey](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey.md)
- Book: [The Journey Home](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home.md)
- Page: 225
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey#The_Journey_Home_(1977)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/the-earth-is-not

## More from this book

> 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.

p. 201 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/one-wishes-to.md)

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

p. 223 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/the-idea-of-wilderness.md)

> 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.

p. 121 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/edward-abbey/the-journey-home/as-for-the.md)