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Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.

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
Affront
Calculated
Altruism
Spontaneous
Charity

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.
Edward Abbey
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I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man.
Edward Abbey
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A journey into the wilderness is the freest, cheapest, most nonprivileged of pleasures. Anyone with two legs and the price of a pair of army surplus combat boots may enter.
Edward Abbey
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A world without open country would be universal jail.
Edward Abbey
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It is not death or dying that is tragic, but rather to have existed without fully participating in life- that is the deepest personal tragedy.
Edward Abbey
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Why administrators are respected and schoolteachers are not: An administrator is paid a lot for doing very little, while a teacher is paid very little for doing a lot.
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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For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!
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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If the world is irrational, we can never know it -- either it or its irrationality.
Edward Abbey
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The gurus come from the sickliest nation on earth to tell us how to live. And we pay them for it.
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.
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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There is beauty, heartbreaking beauty, everywhere.
Edward Abbey
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When guns are outlawed, only the Government will have guns. The Government - and a few outlaws. If that happens, you can count me among the outlaws.
Edward Abbey
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The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.
Edward Abbey
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To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.
Edward Abbey
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The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.
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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The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone - and to no one.
Edward Abbey