Quote

I wish to be an inspector of volcanoes. I want to study cloud formations and memorize the wind and learn by heart the habits of the ponderosa pine.

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
Study
Volcanoes
Learn
Pine
Wish
Formation
Nature
Cloud
Heart
Habits
Inspector
Clouds
Formations
Habit
Inspectors
Wind
Memorize

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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Simplicity is always a virtue.
Edward Abbey
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If wilderness is outlawed, only outlaws can save wilderness.
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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Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'
Edward Abbey
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Critics are like ticks on a dog or tits on a motor: ornamental but dysfunctional.
Edward Abbey
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Mexico: where life is cheap, death is rich, and the buzzards are never unhappy.
Edward Abbey
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When I write paradise I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes - disease and death and the rotting of flesh.
Edward Abbey
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Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal.
Edward Abbey
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Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly it's the highway that is ugly.
Edward Abbey
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Why the critics, like a flock of ducks, always move in perfect unison: Their authority with the public depends upon an appearance of unanimous agreement. One dissenting voice would shatter the whole fragile structure.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.
Edward Abbey
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Come with me, the river said, close your eyes and quiet your limbs and float with me into the wonder and mystery of the canyons, see the unknown and the little known, look upon the stone gods face to face, see Medusa, drink my waters, hear my song, feel my power, come along and drift with me toward the distant, ultimate and legendary sea.
Edward Abbey
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Every moment is precious. And precarious.
Edward Abbey
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Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.
Edward Abbey
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Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure.
Edward Abbey
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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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England has never enjoyed a genuine social revolution. Maybe that's what's wrong with that dear, tepid, vapid, insipid, stuffy, little country.
Edward Abbey
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We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
Edward Abbey
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We live in a time of twin credulities: the hunger for the miraculous combined with a servile awe of science. The mating of the two gives us superstition plus scientism -- a Mongoloid metaphysic.
Edward Abbey