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Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines.

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
Machines
Imperial
Committed
Disasters
Crime
Recorded
History
Crimes
Littles
Largely
Little
Account
Men
Disaster
Banal
Accounts
Levers

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Proverbs save us the trouble of thinking. What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.
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Lightning streaks like gunfire through the clouds, volleys of thunder shake the air.
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Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism.
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The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others.
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Tofu and futons. The adepts of Orientalism seem to spend most of their lives reclining. They can't quite summon the energy to crawl up onto a chair. Even their Yogic exercises are carried out in a prone or sitting position.
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The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.
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There are two kinds of people I cannot abide: bigots and any well-organized ethnic group.
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It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine.
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I'd sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse.
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The ideal kitchen-sink novel: Throw in everything but the kitchen sink. Then add the kitchen sink.
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Nothing can excel a few days in jail for giving a young man or woman a quick education in the basis of industrial society.
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Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?
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Scientific method: There's a madness in the method.
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What is the purpose of the giant sequoia tree? The purpose of the giant sequoia tree is to provide shade for the tiny titmouse.
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Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.
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Every man has two vocations: his own and philosophy.
Edward Abbey
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Despair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.
Edward Abbey
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Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.
Edward Abbey
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A crude meal, no doubt, but the best of all sauces is hunger.
Edward Abbey
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Life is too short for grief. Or regret. Or bullshit.
Edward Abbey