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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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Trout fishing. One must be a stickler for proper form. Use nothing but #4 blasting caps, or a hand grenade, if handy, or at a pool well-lined with stone, one blast from a .44 magnum will bring a few stunned brookies quietly to the surface.
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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Tee Vee football: one team wins, one team loses -- they tie -- who cares? And why?
Edward Abbey
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Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.
Edward Abbey
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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 best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.
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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The best thing about graduating from the university was that I finally had time to sit on a log and read a good book.
Edward Abbey
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Fence straddlers have no balls. In compensation, however, they enjoy a comfortable seat and can retreat swiftly, when danger threatens, to either side of the fence. There is something to be said for every position.
Edward Abbey
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The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an equalizer.
Edward Abbey
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The more fantastic an ideology or theology, the more fanatic its adherents.
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 this cult of wilderness?... because we like the taste of freedom because we like the smell of danger.
Edward Abbey
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The best American writers have come from the hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most of them never even went to college.
Edward Abbey
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The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.
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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All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.
Edward Abbey
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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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Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.
Edward Abbey
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The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.
Edward Abbey