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The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.

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
Simply
Quite
Society
Means
Others
Coerce
Power
Described
Mean
Ideal
Men
Ideals

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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.
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Simplicity is always a virtue.
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Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.
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I've wrecked and ravaged half my life in the pursuit of women, and I suffer the pangs of about seventeen regrets -- the seventeen who got away.
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I wish to be an inspector of volcanoes. I want to study cloud formations and memorize the wind and learn by heart the habits of the ponderosa pine.
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All living things on earth are kindred.
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Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses.
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The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders. Remaining silent about the destruction of nature is an endorsement of that destruction.
Edward Abbey
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The very poor are strictly materialistic. It takes money to be a mystic.
Edward Abbey
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All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.
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Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom'. The word 'freedom' scares them it has too much of a paleolithic ring to it.
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Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and the powerful.
Edward Abbey
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The highest treason, the meanest treason, is to deny the holiness of this little blue planet on which we journey through the cold void of space.
Edward Abbey
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When a writer has done the best that he can do, he should then withdraw from the book-writing business and take up an honest trade like shoe repair, cattle stealing, or screwworm management.
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Instant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.
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A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.
Edward Abbey
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High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring
Edward Abbey
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It is not an easy thing to inflate a dog.
Edward Abbey
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My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'
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