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As war and government prove, insanity is the most contagious of diseases.

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
Contagious
Diseases
Insanity
Disease
Prove
Liberty
War

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.
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If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream.
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Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.
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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.
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Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful.
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Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.
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Only the half-mad are wholly alive.
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.
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The desert wears... a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting -- but waiting for what?
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There is no force more potent in the modern world than stupidity fueled by greed.
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Everyone should learn a manual trade: It's never too late to become an honest person.
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In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolution, all things recede to distrances out of reach, relecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert.
Edward Abbey
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The feminists have a legitimate grievance. But so does everyone else.
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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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The critics say that Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony has no form. They are wrong it has the form of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.
Edward Abbey
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It is an author's most solemn obligation to honor truth. If the free and independent writer does not speak truth to power, who will?
Edward Abbey
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A giant thirst is a great joy when quenched in time.
Edward Abbey
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One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough.
Edward Abbey
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Why the critics, like a flock of ducks, always move in perfect unison: Their authority with the public depends upon an appearance of unanimous agreement. One dissenting voice would shatter the whole fragile structure.
Edward Abbey
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If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
Edward Abbey