Quote

When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.

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
Atheism
Attempting
Prove
Rage
Usually
Philosopher
Becomes
Sign
Common
False
Fear
Intellect
Opaque
Sense
Complicated
Plainly
True
Argument
Tedious

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Girls, like flowers, bloom but once. But once is enough.
Edward Abbey
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A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be - will be - a human zoo. A high-tech slum.
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There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.
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What did Jesus say to the headwaiter at the Last Supper? 'Separate checks, please.'
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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One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.
Edward Abbey
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Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
Edward Abbey
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It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.
Edward Abbey
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When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
Edward Abbey
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What good is a Bill of Rights that does not include the right to play, to wander, to explore, the right to stillness and solitude, to discovery and physical freedom?
Edward Abbey
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I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long.
Edward Abbey
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And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain.
Edward Abbey
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I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.
Edward Abbey
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I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.
Edward Abbey
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Let us praise the noble turkey vulture: No one envies him he harms nobody and he contemplates our little world from a most serene and noble height.
Edward Abbey
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The feminist notion that the whole of human history has been nothing but a vast intricate conspiracy by men to enslave their wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters presents us with an intellectual neurosis for which we do not yet have a name.
Edward Abbey
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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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Every moment is precious. And precarious.
Edward Abbey