Quote

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.

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
Power
Neither
Reliant
America
Nation
Craftsman
Littles
Rich
Dominate
Little
Nations
Hunters
Self
American
Farmers
Would
Artist
Serve
Others
Artists
Craftsmen
Dream
Rule
Ranchers

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
Edward Abbey
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One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.
Edward Abbey
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In a nation of sheep, one brave man forms a majority.
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If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
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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Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.
Edward Abbey
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Apuleius married a rich widow, then wrote _The Golden Ass_.
Edward Abbey
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We are befouling and destroying our own home, we are committing a slow but accelerating race suicide and life murder - planetary biocide. Now there is a mighty theme for a mighty book but a challenge to which no modern novelist or poet has yet responded. Where is our Melville, our Milton, our Thomas Mann when we need him most?
Edward Abbey
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Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and esthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one.
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 you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.
Edward Abbey
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In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.
Edward Abbey
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By the age of eighteen, a human has acquired enough joy and heartache to provide the food of reflection for a century.
Edward Abbey
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If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's Germany and Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.
Edward Abbey
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Chastity is more a state of mind than of anatomy.
Edward Abbey
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Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.
Edward Abbey
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There are no vacant lots in nature.
Edward Abbey
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Music endures and ages far better than books. Books, made of words, are unavoidably attached to ideas, events, conflict, and history, but music has the power to transcend time. At least for a time. Palestrina sounds as fresh today as he did in 1555, but Dante, only three centuries older, already smells of the archaic, the medieval, the catacombs.
Edward Abbey
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J. Edgar Hoover, J. Bracken Lee, J. Parnell Thomas, J. Paul Getty -- you can always tell a shithead by that initial initial.
Edward Abbey
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Nearly all of Latin America, from Chile to Mexico, is one long rack of torture. Financed, equipped, and refined by the U.S. government.
Edward Abbey