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All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.

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
Government
Good
Pernicious
Forms
Including
Liberty
Form

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A pretty girl can do no wrong.
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Reply to Plato: I seen horses I seen cows I haint never yet seen horsiness nor that there bovinity neither.
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What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? 'Separate checks, please.'
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In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.
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Beware the writer who always encloses the word *reality* in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you.
Edward Abbey
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Of all bores, the worst is the sparkling bore.
Edward Abbey
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Baseball is a slow, sluggish game, with frequent and trivial interruptions, offering the spectator many opportunities to reflect at leisure upon the situation on the field: This is what a fan loves most about the game
Edward Abbey
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What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
Edward Abbey
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Simplicity is always a virtue.
Edward Abbey
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Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers -- obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls.
Edward Abbey
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A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.
Edward Abbey
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Though men now possess the power to dominate and exploit every corner of the natural world, nothing in that fact implies that they have the right or the need to do so.
Edward Abbey
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A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.
Edward Abbey
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Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'
Edward Abbey
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Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.
Edward Abbey
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The feminists have a legitimate grievance. But so does everyone else.
Edward Abbey
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The rich can buy everything but health, virtue, friendship, wit, good looks, love, pride, intelligence, grace, and, if you need it, happiness.
Edward Abbey
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The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.
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.
Edward Abbey