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I love America because it is a confused, chaotic mess - and I hope we can keep it this way for at least another thousand years. The permissive society is the free society.

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
Years
Thousand
Way
Least
Love
Society
Free
Hope
Permissive
Keep
Chaotic
Another
Confused
America
Mess

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.
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The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
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There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.
Edward Abbey
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Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.
Edward Abbey
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Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.
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Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.
Edward Abbey
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There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.
Edward Abbey
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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!
Edward Abbey
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Generally speaking, it's a matter of only mild intellectual interest to me whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth. In fact, I don't care a rat's ass either way.
Edward Abbey
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Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
Edward Abbey
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The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space.
Edward Abbey
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Death is every man's final critic. To die well you must live bravely.
Edward Abbey
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James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.
Edward Abbey
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For women, the sexual act is a means to a higher end. For a man, it is an end in itself.
Edward Abbey
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When I write paradise I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.
Edward Abbey
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Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.
Edward Abbey
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I always wanted to be a cowboy. But alas! I was burdened early with certain inescapable obligations to world literature.
Edward Abbey
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Apuleius married a rich widow, then wrote _The Golden Ass_.
Edward Abbey
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It's all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure-they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come.
Edward Abbey
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Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.
Edward Abbey