Quote

Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom'. The word 'freedom' scares them it has too much of a paleolithic ring to it.

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
Prefer
Paleolithic
Liberty
Tories
Term
Scares
Word
Ordered
Freedom
Ring
Much
Scare
Rings
Contemporary

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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You can't belay a man who's falling in love.
Edward Abbey
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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 true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.
Edward Abbey
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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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Belief? What do I believe in? I believe in sun. In rock. In the dogma of the sun and the doctrine of the rock. I believe in blood, fire, woman, rivers, eagles, storm, drums, flutes, banjos, and broom-tailed horses.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Chastity is more a state of mind than of anatomy.
Edward Abbey
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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)
Edward Abbey
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Why administrators are respected and schoolteachers are not: An administrator is paid a lot for doing very little, while a teacher is paid very little for doing a lot.
Edward Abbey
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The result of this bestial lust is an indiscriminate and promiscuous splaying of all of my energies- wanting all, I accomplish nothing desiring everything, I satisfy nothing and am satisfied by nothing.
Edward Abbey
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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.
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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High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring
Edward Abbey
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The earth, like the sun, like the air, belongs to everyone - and to no one.
Edward Abbey
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What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.
Edward Abbey
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A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.
Edward Abbey
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The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art and (2) sedition.
Edward Abbey
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Life is too tragic for sadness: Let us rejoice.
Edward Abbey
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Somewhere in the depths of solitude, beyond wilderness and freedom, lay the trap of madness.
Edward Abbey
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We are befouling and destroying our own home, we are committing a slow but accelerating race suicide and life murder - planetary biocide. Now there is a mighty theme for a mighty book but a challenge to which no modern novelist or poet has yet responded. Where is our Melville, our Milton, our Thomas Mann when we need him most?
Edward Abbey