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

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues.
Edward Abbey
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We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
Edward Abbey
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Man's deliberate destruction of his own habitat -- planet Earth -- could serve as a mighty theme for a mighty book worthy of a modern Melville or Tolstoy. But our best fictioneers confine themselves to domestic drama -- soap opera with literary trimmings.
Edward Abbey
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The sense of justice springs from self-respect both are coeval with our birth. Children are born with an innate sense of justice it usually takes twelve years of public schooling and four more years of college to beat it out of them.
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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Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about.
Edward Abbey
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The only thing left worth saving is wilderness.
Edward Abbey
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Pure science is a myth: Both mathematical theoreticians like Albert Einstein and practical crackpots like Henry Ford dealt with different aspects of the same world.
Edward Abbey
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I'm a fastidious sort of fellow, fond of watermelon and buckbrush nuts.
Edward Abbey
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Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.
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
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In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)
Edward Abbey
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The purpose of love, sex, and marriage is the production and raising of children. But look about you: Most people have no business having children. They are unqualified, either genetically or culturally or both, to reproduce such sorry specimens as themselves. Of all our privileges, the license to breed is the one most grossly abused.
Edward Abbey
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Men love their ideas more than their lives. And the more preposterous the idea, the more eager they are to die for it. And to kill for it.
Edward Abbey
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From the point of view of a tapeworm, man was created by God to serve the appetite of the tapeworm.
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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If we had the power of ten Shakespeares or a dozen Mozarts, we could not produce anything half so marvelous as one ordinary human child.
Edward Abbey
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In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.
Edward Abbey
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All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.
Edward Abbey
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Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface.
Edward Abbey