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Humans were free before the word freedom became necessary.

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
Humans
Became
Necessary
Word
Freedom
Free

More quotes by Edward Abbey

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In the dog-eat-dog economy, the Doberman is boss.
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There comes a time in the life of us all when we must lay aside our books or put down our tools and leave our place of work and walk forth on the road to meet the enemy face-to-face. Once and for all and at last
Edward Abbey
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Whatever we cannot easily understand we call God this saves much wear and tear on the brain tissues.
Edward Abbey
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Pure science is a myth: Both mathematical theoreticians like Albert Einstein and practical crackpots like Henry Ford dealt with different aspects of the same world.
Edward Abbey
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I have been a lucky man. But someone has to be.
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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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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When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.
Edward Abbey
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Our contemporary Tories prefer the term 'ordered liberty' to 'freedom'. The word 'freedom' scares them it has too much of a paleolithic ring to it.
Edward Abbey
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It may be true that my desk here is really 'nothing but' a transient eddy of electrons in the flux of universal process. Nevertheless, I find that it continues to support my feet, my revolver, and my cigars all day long. What happens when my back is turned I don't know. Or much care. That's no concern of mine.
Edward Abbey
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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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The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for -- for what? Someday we'll know.
Edward Abbey
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Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.
Edward Abbey
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The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.
Edward Abbey
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To the question: Wilderness, who needs it? Doc would say: Because we like the taste of freedom, comrades. Because we like the smell of danger. But, thought Hayduke, what about the smell of fear, Dad?
Edward Abbey
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This world may be only illusion -- but it's the only illusion we've got.
Edward Abbey
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In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be.
Edward Abbey
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A critic is to an author as a fungus to an oak.
Edward Abbey
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I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.
Edward Abbey
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Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues.
Edward Abbey