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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Literature, like anything else, can become a wearisome business if you make a lifetime specialty of it. A healthy, wholesome man would no more spend his entire life reading great books than he would packing cookies for Nabisco.
Edward Abbey
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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
Edward Abbey
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Proust again: One can only wish that a man with such powers of total recall had led a less tedious life, moved among somewhat livelier circles.
Edward Abbey
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Music endures and ages far better than books. Books, made of words, are unavoidably attached to ideas, events, conflict, and history, but music has the power to transcend time. At least for a time. Palestrina sounds as fresh today as he did in 1555, but Dante, only three centuries older, already smells of the archaic, the medieval, the catacombs.
Edward Abbey
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Why can't we simply borrow what is useful to us from Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, especially Zen, as we borrow from Christianity, science, American Indian traditions and world literature in general, including philosophy, and let the rest go hang? Borrow what we need but rely principally upon our own senses, common sense and daily living experience.
Edward Abbey
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One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothing can beat teamwork.
Edward Abbey
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Desire, said the Buddha, is the cause of suffering. But without desire, what delight?
Edward Abbey
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The tragic sense of life: our heroic acceptance of the suffering of others.
Edward Abbey
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Where all think alike there is little danger of innovation.
Edward Abbey
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We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.
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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When the philosopher's argument becomes tedious, complicated, and opaque, it is usually a sign that he is attempting to prove as true to the intellect what is plainly false to common sense.
Edward Abbey
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Books are like eggs -- best when fresh.
Edward Abbey
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All living things on earth are kindred.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Most of what we call the classics of world literature suggest artifacts in a wax museum. We have to hire and pay professors to get them read and talked about.
Edward Abbey
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Scientific method: There's a madness in the method.
Edward Abbey
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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.
Edward Abbey
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Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.
Edward Abbey
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For this world that men have made, none of us is bad enough. For the world that made us, none is good enough.
Edward Abbey