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What good is a Bill of Rights that does not include the right to play, to wander, to explore, the right to stillness and solitude, to discovery and physical freedom?

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
Doe
Wander
Play
Bill
Right
Bills
Good
Solitude
Discovery
Physical
Include
Rights
Stillness
Freedom
Explore

More quotes by 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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Anywhere, anytime, I'd sacrifice the finest nuance for a laugh, the most elegant trope for a smile.
Edward Abbey
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It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book.
Edward Abbey
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A life without tragedy would not be worth living.
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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There are no vacant lots in nature.
Edward Abbey
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The love of wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyong reach it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we shall ever know, the only paradise we ever need, if only we had the eyes to see.
Edward Abbey
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Longevity, like intelligence and good looks and health and strength of character, is largely a matter of genetic heritage. Choose your parents with care.
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 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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Simply because humankind have the power now to meddle or 'manage' or 'exercise stewardship' in every nook and cranny of the world does not mean that we have a right to do so. Even less, the obligation.
Edward Abbey
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Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Saving the world is only a hobby. Most of the time I do nothing.
Edward Abbey
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In writing, fidelity to fact leads eventually to the poetry of truth.
Edward Abbey
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I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact.
Edward Abbey
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I’m tired of doing what I don’t want to do to live the way I don’t want to live.
Edward Abbey
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Desert springtime, with flowers popping up all over the place, trees leafing out, streams gushing down from the mountains. Great time of year for hiking, camping, exploring, sleeping under the new moon and the old stars. At dawn and at evening we hear the coyotes howling with excitement—mating season.
Edward Abbey
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In order to write a book, it is necessary to sit down (or stand up) and write. Therein lies the difficulty.
Edward Abbey
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In this glare of brilliant emptiness, in this arid intensity of pure heat, in the heart of a weird solitude, great silence and grand desolution, all things recede to distrances out of reach, relecting light but impossible to touch, annihilating all thought and all that men have made to a spasm of whirling dust far out on the golden desert.
Edward Abbey