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I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
Edward Abbey
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Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze.
Edward Abbey
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Nothing could be older than the daily news, nothing deader than yesterday's newspaper.
Edward Abbey
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Most of the literary classics are worth reading, if you've nothing better to do.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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What's more American than violence?" Hayduke wanted to know. "Violence, it's as American as pizza pie.
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The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for — for what? Someday we'll know.
Edward Abbey
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It's a fool's life, a rogue's life, and a good life if you keep laughing all the way to the grave.
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Once upon a time, I dreamed of becoming a great man. Later, a good man. Now, finally, I find it difficult enough and honor enough to be — a man.
Edward Abbey
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In America, as elsewhere, the general irritability level keeps rising.
Edward Abbey
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War? The one war I'd be happy to join is the war against officers.
Edward Abbey
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Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
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The purpose of love, sex, and marriage is the production and raising of children. But look about you: Most people have no business having children. They are unqualified, either genetically or culturally or both, to reproduce such sorry specimens as themselves. Of all our privileges, the license to breed is the one most grossly abused.
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The plow has probably done more harm — in the long run — than the sword.
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In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food.
Edward Abbey
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What's the difference between a whore and a congressman? A congressman makes more money.
Edward Abbey
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If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully — as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.
Edward Abbey
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Is it possible to grow wiser without knowing it? One hopes so. We all hope so.
Edward Abbey
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Style: There is something in too much verbal felicity (as in Joyce or Nabokov or Borges) that can betray the writer into technique for the sake of technique.
Edward Abbey
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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.
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There comes a point, in literary objectivity, when the author's self- effacement is hard to distinguish from moral cowardice.
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When a man must be afraid to drink freely from his country's river and streams that country is no longer fit to live in.
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Grand opera is a form of musical entertainment for people who hate music.
Edward Abbey
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Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.
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All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.
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Quote of the day
Chaos is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds.
George Santayana
Edward Abbey
Born:
January 29, 1927
Died:
March 14, 1989
(aged 62)
Bio:
Edward Paul Abbey was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views.
Known for:
Desert Solitaire (1968)
The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)
The Fool's Progress (1988)
The Brave Cowboy (1956)
Hayduke Lives
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