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What is reason? Knowledge informed by sympathy, intelligence in the arms of love.

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
Reason
Love
Informed
Sympathy
Intelligence
Arms
Knowledge

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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The function of football, soccer, basketball and other passion-sports in modern industrial society is the transference of boredom, frustration, anger and rage into socially acceptable forms of combat. A temporary substitute for war for nationalism identification with something bigger than the self.
Edward Abbey
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I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.
Edward Abbey
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A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.
Edward Abbey
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In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.
Edward Abbey
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Put the park rangers to work. Lazy scheming loafers, they've wasted too many years selling tickets at toll booths and sitting behind desks filling out charts and tables
Edward Abbey
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The ready availability of suicide, like sex and alcohol, is one of life's basic consolations.
Edward Abbey
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Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal.
Edward Abbey
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Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism.
Edward Abbey
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To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?
Edward Abbey
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The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you the public will not believe you your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward.
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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One must be reasonable in one's demands on life. For myself, all that I ask is: (1) accurate information (2) coherent knowledge (3) deep understanding (4) infinite loving wisdom (5) no more kidney stones, please.
Edward Abbey
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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)
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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But of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust.
Edward Abbey
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The author: an imaginary person who writes real books.
Edward Abbey
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A drink a day keeps the shrink away.
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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Jane Austen: Getting into her books is like getting in bed with a cadaver. Something vital is lacking namely, life.
Edward Abbey
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In the end, for all our differences and conflicts, most women and men share the same food, work, shelter, bed, life, joy, anguish, and fate. We need each other.
Edward Abbey