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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
State
Purpose
Fear
True
Unacknowledged
States
Awe
Capital
Punishment
Inspire

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
Edward Abbey
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Running the big rapids is like sex: half the fun lies in the anticipation. Two thirds of the thrill with the approach. The remainder is only ecstasy-or darkness.
Edward Abbey
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I am my brother's keeper, says the chickenshit liberal. Perhaps he does not realize that he now has more than 2 1/2 billion brothers.
Edward Abbey
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What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.
Edward Abbey
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Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage and without courage all other virtues are useless.
Edward Abbey
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What is reason? Knowledge informed by sympathy, intelligence in the arms of love.
Edward Abbey
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One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough.
Edward Abbey
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Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.
Edward Abbey
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The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Some people write to please, to soothe, to console. Others to provoke, to challenge, to exasperate and infuriate. I've always found the second approach the more pleasing.
Edward Abbey
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I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.
Edward Abbey
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The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art and (2) sedition.
Edward Abbey
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Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.
Edward Abbey
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Death is every man's final critic. To die well you must live bravely.
Edward Abbey
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Every man has two vocations: his own and philosophy.
Edward Abbey
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Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us-if only we were worthy of it.
Edward Abbey
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Paradise is the here and now, the actual, tangible, dogmatically real Earth on which we stand. Yes, God bless America, the Earth upon which we stand.
Edward Abbey
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There has never been a day in my life when I was not in love.
Edward Abbey
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Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
Edward Abbey