Quote

Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

Edward Abbey

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Edward Abbey
Age: 62 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 29
Died: 1989
Died: March 14
Author
Environmentalist
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Edward Paul Abbey
Soviet
Gun
Molotov
Civilization
Cocktail
Youth
Tank
Hand
Cocktails
Culture
Tanks
Hands
Cop
Guns

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In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.
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The hawk's cry is as sharp as its beak.
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Who needs astrology? The wise man gets by on fortune cookies.
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Grown men do not need leaders.
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In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.
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A good philosopher is one who does not take ideas seriously.
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Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.
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The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.
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Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?
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Music clouds the intellect but clarifies the heart.
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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.
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I’m tired of doing what I don’t want to do to live the way I don’t want to live.
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If a man’s imagination were not so weak, so easily tired, if his capacity for wonder not so limited, he would abandon forever such fantasies of the supernal. He would learn to perceive in water, leaves and silence more than sufficient of the absolute and marvelous, more than enough to console him for the loss of the ancient dream.
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Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead symmetrical but stiff.
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Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.
Edward Abbey
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The most striking thing about the rich is the gracious democracy of their manners -- and the crude vulgarity of their way of life.
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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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Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.
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A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.
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Anywhere, anytime, I'd sacrifice the finest nuance for a laugh, the most elegant trope for a smile.
Edward Abbey