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What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most.

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
Areas
Livable
Almost
Freer
Call
Cleaner
Turns
Cleaners
Place
Economists
Always
Economist
Depressed
Area

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Suicide: Don't knock it if you ain't tried it.
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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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Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.
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Every important change in our society, for the good, at least, has taken place because of popular pressure-pressure from below, from the great mass of people.
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A life without tragedy would not be worth living.
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Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.
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The only thing left worth saving is wilderness.
Edward Abbey
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My sole literary ambition is to write one good novel, then retire to my hut in the desert, assume the lotus position, compose my mind and senses, and sink into meditation, contemplating my novel.
Edward Abbey
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Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage and without courage all other virtues are useless.
Edward Abbey
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Poetry -- even bad poetry -- may be our final hope.
Edward Abbey
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One word is worth a thousand pictures. If it's the right word.
Edward Abbey
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The purpose and function of government is not to preside over change but to prevent change. By political methods when unavoidable, by violence when convenient.
Edward Abbey
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Charity should be spontaneous. Calculated altruism is an affront.
Edward Abbey
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I always write with my .357 magnum handy. Why? Well, you never know when God may try to interfere.
Edward Abbey
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The feminists have a legitimate grievance. But so does everyone else.
Edward Abbey
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Music is a savage art, a measured madness.
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
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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.
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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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.
Edward Abbey