Quote

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.

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
Lying
Farms
Evil
Distinction
Making
Hardly
Heart
Germany
Men
Institutions
Hearts
Rebecca
Lies
Farm
Worth
Hitler

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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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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)
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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
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Love flowers best in openness and freedom.
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Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.
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Mozart, striving for perfection, wrote the same symphony forty-one times. In his case, it worked. He wrote a perfect symphony.
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The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you the public will not believe you your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward.
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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.
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Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.
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One day in Dipstick, Nebraska, or Landfill, Oklahoma, is worth more to me than an eternity in Dante's plastic Paradiso, or Yeats's gold-plated Byzantium.
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A journey into the wilderness is the freest, cheapest, most nonprivileged of pleasures. Anyone with two legs and the price of a pair of army surplus combat boots may enter.
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All living things on earth are kindred.
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The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills.
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A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.
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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.
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Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.
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If you feel that you must suffer, then plan your suffering carefully -- as you choose your dreams, as you conceive your ancestors.
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Life is hard? True - but let's love it anyhow, though it breaks every bone in our bodies.
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A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner.
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Chastity is more a state of mind than of anatomy.
Edward Abbey