Quote

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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Edward Abbey
Age: 62 †
Born: 1927
Born: January 29
Died: 1989
Died: March 14
Author
Environmentalist
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Writer
Edward Paul Abbey
Method
Function
Violence
Purpose
Preside
Political
Unavoidable
Change
Convenient
Government
Methods
Prevent

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Literary critics, like a herd of cows or a school of fish, always face in the same direction, obeying that love for unity that every critic requires.
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My notion of a great novel is something like a five-hundred-page shaggy-dog story, with only the punch line omitted.
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We are preoccupied with time. If we could learn to love space as deeply as we are now obsessed with time, we might discover a new meaning in the phrase to live like men.
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If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's Germany and Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.
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When the situation is hopeless, there's nothing to worry about.
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What good is a Bill of Rights that does not include the right to play, to wander, to explore, the right to stillness and solitude, to discovery and physical freedom?
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In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.
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Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.
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It is an author's most solemn obligation to honor truth. If the free and independent writer does not speak truth to power, who will?
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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.
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The domination of nature leads to the domination of human nature.
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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.
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The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.
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It is not an easy thing to inflate a dog.
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Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies.
Edward Abbey
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One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city - as I once did for a couple of years.
Edward Abbey
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I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man.
Edward Abbey
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If the world is irrational, we can never know it -- either it or its irrationality.
Edward Abbey
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In America, as elsewhere, the general irritability level keeps rising.
Edward Abbey
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There are no vacant lots in nature.
Edward Abbey