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

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making.
Edward Abbey
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I always wanted to be a cowboy. But alas! I was burdened early with certain inescapable obligations to world literature.
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Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital of Coconino County: any town with thirteen churches and only four bars has got an incipient social problem. That town is looking for trouble.
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Guns don't kill people people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.
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A cowboy is a farm boy in leather britches and a comical hat.
Edward Abbey
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The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.
Edward Abbey
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A good writer must have more than vin rosé in his veins, use more than Chablis for ink.
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England has never enjoyed a genuine social revolution. Maybe that's what's wrong with that dear, tepid, vapid, insipid, stuffy, little country.
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We're all undesirable elements from somebody's point of view.
Edward Abbey
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The ever-rising cost of living: Someday soon, the corporate technicians will be locking meters on our noses and charging us a royalty on the air we breathe.
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Those who fear death most are those who enjoy life least.
Edward Abbey
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All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.
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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Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead symmetrical but stiff.
Edward Abbey
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I took the other road, all right, but only because it was the easy road for me, the way I wanted to go. If I've encountered some unnecessary resistance that's because most of the traffic is going the other way.
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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Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze.
Edward Abbey
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A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.
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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Motherhood is an essential, difficult, and full-time job. Women who do not wish to be mothers should not have babies.
Edward Abbey