Quote

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.

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
Behind
Whips
Example
Rulers
Leader
Club
Fear
Clubs
Means
Leads
Power
Fronts
Pushes
Mean
Front
Whip
Behinds
Ruler

More quotes by 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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Put the park rangers to work. Lazy scheming loafers, they've wasted too many years selling tickets at toll booths and sitting behind desks filling out charts and tables
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Salome had but seven veils the artist has a thousand.
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My own best books have not been published. In fact, they've not even been written yet.
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It is not death or dying that is tragic, but rather to have existed without fully participating in life- that is the deepest personal tragedy.
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Girls: I never wanted them all. Just all the ones I wanted.
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In everything but brains and brawn, women are vastly superior to men. A different race.
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Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?
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A world without open country would be universal jail.
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There are no vacant lots in nature.
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I am my brother's keeper, says the chickenshit liberal. Perhaps he does not realize that he now has more than 2 1/2 billion brothers.
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Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.
Edward Abbey
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I thought of the wilderness we had left behind us, open to sea and sky, joyous in its plenitude and simplicity, perfect yet vulnerable, unaware of what is coming, defended by nothing, guarded by no one.
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All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.
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God is love? Not bloody likely.
Edward Abbey
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The response to my books from my East Coast friends has been wildly various, running the gamut from 'bad' to 'very bad.' (Is there another gamut?)
Edward Abbey
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Generally speaking, it's a matter of only mild intellectual interest to me whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth. In fact, I don't care a rat's ass either way.
Edward Abbey
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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.
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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Vladimir Nabokov was a writer who cared nothing for music and whose favorite sport was the pursuit, capture, and murder of butterflies. This explains many things for example, the fact that Nabokov's novels, for all their elegance and wit, resemble nothing so much as butterflies pinned to a board: pretty but dead symmetrical but stiff.
Edward Abbey