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Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.

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
Thirds
Ridiculous
Weak
Role
Roles
Present
Amateurish
Liberty
Fulfills
Government
Third

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Congress is always willing to appropriate money for more and bigger paved roads, anywhere -- particularly if they form loops.
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To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.
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The earth is real. Only a fool, milking his cow, denies the cow's reality.
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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?
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All governments require enemy governments.
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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.
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I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.
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I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.
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If the world is irrational, we can never know it -- either it or its irrationality.
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My own best books have not been published. In fact, they've not even been written yet.
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Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God bless America, the Earth upon which we stand.
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Grand opera is a form of musical entertainment for people who hate music.
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A life without tragedy would not be worth living.
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All revolutions have failed? Perhaps. But rebellion for good cause is self- justifying -- a good in itself. Rebellion transforms slaves into human beings, if only for an hour.
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I would prefer to write about everything what else is there? But one must be selective.
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In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.
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Music begins where words leave off. Music expresses the inexpressible. If there is a Kingdom of Heaven, it lies in music.
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Through logic and inference we can prove anything. Therefore, logic and inference, in contrast to ordinary daily living experience, are secondary instruments of knowledge. Probably tertiary.
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Concrete is heavy iron is hard - but the grass will prevail.
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Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation.
Edward Abbey