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The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.

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
Punishment
Inspire
State
Purpose
Fear
True
Unacknowledged
States
Awe
Capital

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.
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All governments need enemies. How else to justify their existence?
Edward Abbey
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Chastity is more a state of mind than of anatomy.
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Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.
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The very poor are strictly materialistic. It takes money to be a mystic.
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Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.
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All governments require enemy governments.
Edward Abbey
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I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long.
Edward Abbey
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Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.
Edward Abbey
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Grand opera is a form of musical entertainment for people who hate music.
Edward Abbey
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I once sat on the rim of a mesa above the Rio Grande for three days and nights, trying to have a vision. I got hungry and saw God in the form of a beef pie.
Edward Abbey
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The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.
Edward Abbey
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Tee Vee football: one team wins, one team loses -- they tie -- who cares? And why?
Edward Abbey
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Life is too tragic for sadness: Let us rejoice.
Edward Abbey
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Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.
Edward Abbey
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Girls, like flowers, bloom but once. But once is enough.
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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To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me.
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.
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.
Edward Abbey