Quote

One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough.

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
Power
Omnipotent
States
Defiance
Human
Personality
Humans
Perhaps
Enough
Single
Time
Least
State
Transfigures
Seems
Transforms

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long.
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Jack Kerouac, like a sick refrigerator, worked too hard at keeping cool and died on his mama's lap from alcohol and infantilism.
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Appearance versus reality? Appearance is reality, God damn it!
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Nearly all of Latin America, from Chile to Mexico, is one long rack of torture. Financed, equipped, and refined by the U.S. government.
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Love flowers best in openness and freedom.
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The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art and (2) sedition.
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My computer tells me that in twenty-five years there will be no more computers.
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How can I be so evil? It ain't easy.
Edward Abbey
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Wealth should come like manna from heaven, unearned and uncalled for. Money should be like grace -- a gift. It is not worth sweating and scheming for.
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Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)
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And if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain.
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What is reason? Knowledge informed by sympathy, intelligence in the arms of love.
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J. Edgar Hoover, J. Bracken Lee, J. Parnell Thomas, J. Paul Getty -- you can always tell a shithead by that initial initial.
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The sexual revolution transformed the American West: Now even cowboys can get laid.
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Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural paradise which lies all around us-if only we were worthy of it.
Edward Abbey
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I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth.
Edward Abbey
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The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.
Edward Abbey
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If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's Germany and Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.
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A critic is to an author as a fungus to an oak.
Edward Abbey
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The sense of justice springs from self-respect both are coeval with our birth. Children are born with an innate sense of justice it usually takes twelve years of public schooling and four more years of college to beat it out of them.
Edward Abbey