Quote

In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.

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
Good
Students
Always
Equal
Never
State
Congregation
People
Church
Faculty
Less
Worthy
Social
University
States
Parts
Whole
Institutions

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A drink a day keeps the shrink away.
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Guns don't kill people people kill people. Of course, people with guns kill more people. But that's only natural. It's hard. But it's fair.
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In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.
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Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.
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The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all.
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It is not enough to understand the natural world the point is to defend and preserve it.
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The industrial corporation is the natural enemy of nature.
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A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.
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In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.)
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Our “neoconservatives” are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.
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That which today calls itself science gives us more and more information, and indigestible glut of information, and less and less understanding.
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James Joyce buried himself in his great work. _Finnegan's Wake_ is his monument and his tombstone. A dead end.
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Don't talk to me about other worlds, separate realities, lost continents or invisible realms -- I know where I belong. Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.
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The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone - and to no one.
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Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in the ghosts that haunt the human mind.
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All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.
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In the dog-eat-dog economy, the Doberman is boss.
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The Proustian aquarium: grotesque and gorgeous fish drifting with languid fins through a subaqueous medium of pale violet polluted ink.
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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 the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be.
Edward Abbey