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A Venturesome Minority Will Always Be Eager To Set Off On Their Own, And No Obstacles Should Be Placed In Their Path; Let Them Take Risks, For Godsake, Let Them Get Lost, Sunburnt, Stranded, Drowned, Eaten By Bears, Buried Alive Under Avalanches - That Is The Right And Privilege Of Any Free American.

-Edward Abbey

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A Venturesome Minority Will

Edward Abbey

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A Venturesome Minority Will Always Be Eager To Set Off On Their Own, And No Obstacles Should Be Placed In Their Path; Let Them Take Risks, For Godsake, Let Them Get Lost, Sunburnt, Stranded, Drowned, Eaten By Bears, Buried Alive Under Avalanches - That Is The Right And Privilege Of Any Free American.

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A Society That Feels Itself Too Poor To Afford The Preservation Of Wilderness Is Not Worthy Of The Name Civilization.

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In Everything But Brains And Brawn, Women Are Vastly Superior To Men. A Different Race.

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In The End, For All Our Differences And Conflicts, Most Women And Men Share The Same Food, Work, Shelter, Bed, Life, Joy, Anguish, And Fate. We Need Each Other.

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Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

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.

Life Is Hard? True - But Let's Love It Anyhow, Though It Breaks Every Bone In Our Bodies.

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Life Is Cruel? Compared To What?

A Patriot Must Always Be Ready To Defend His Country Against His Government.

Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

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Life Without Music Would Be An Intolerable Insult.

Life Without Music

Nature Is Indifferent To Our Love, But Never Unfaithful.

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

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Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

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Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

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Defiance Is Beautiful. The Defiance Of Power, Especially Great Or Overwhelming Power, Exalts And Glorifies The Rebel.

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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.

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God Bless America. Let's Try To Save Some Of It.

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The Distrust Of Wit Is The Beginning Of Tyranny.

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High Technology Has Done Us One Great Service: It Has Retaught Us The Delight Of Performing Simple And Primordial Tasks - Chopping Wood, Building A Fire, Drawing Water From A Spring

Growth For The Sake Of Growth Is The Ideology Of The Cancer Cell.

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It Is Always Dishonest For A Reviewer To Review The Author Instead Of The Author's Book.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

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It Seems Clear At Last That Our Love For The Natural World-nature-is The Only Means By Which We Can Requite God's Obvious Love For It.

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Lightning Streaks Like Gunfire Through The Clouds, Volleys Of Thunder Shake The Air.

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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.

The New Age Orgy: The Flesh Was Willing But The Spirit's Weak.

Running The Big Rapids Is Like Sex: Half The Fun Lies In The Anticipation. Two Thirds Of The Thrill With The Approach. The Remainder Is Only Ecstasy-or Darkness.

By The Age Of Forty, A Man Is Responsible For His Face. And His Fate.

Most Of Us Lead Lives Of Chaotic Improvisation From Day To Day, Bawling For Peace While Plunging Grimly Into Fresh Disorders.

In The Afternoon I Watch The Clouds Drift Past The Bald Peak Of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (someone Has To Do It.)

It Is Not The Writer's Task To Answer Questions But To Question Answers. To Be Impertinent, Insolent, And, If Necessary, Subversive.

Our Culture Runs On Coffee And Gasoline, The First Often Tasting Like The Second.

Proverbs Save Us The Trouble Of Thinking. What We Call Folk Wisdom Is Often No More Than A Kind Of Expedient Stupidity.

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But It Is A Writer's Duty To Write And Speak And Record The Truth, Always The Truth, No Matter Whom May Be Offended.

I Despise My Own Nation Most. Because I Know It Best. Because I Still Love It, Suffering From Hope. For Me, That's Patrotism.

I Do Not Believe In Personal Immortality; It Seems So Unnecessary. Show Me One Man Who Deserves To Live Forever.

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.

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You Cannot Reshape Human Nature Without Mutilating Human Beings.

Scientific Method: There's A Madness In The Method.

Scientific Method

The "terror" Of The French Revolution Lasted For Ten Years. The Terror That Preceded And Led To It Lasted For A Thousand Years.

Nobody Seems More Obsessed By Diet Than Our Antimaterialist, Otherworldly, New Age, Spiritual Types. But If The Material World Is Merely Illusion, An Honest Guru Should As Content With Budweiser And Bratwurst As With Raw Carrot Juice, Tofu, And Seaweed Slime.

The Response To My Books From My East Coast Friends Has Been Wildly Various, Running The Gamut From 'bad' To 'very Bad.' (is There Another Gamut?)

If A Man’s Imagination Were Not So Weak, So Easily Tired, If His Capacity For Wonder Not So Limited, He Would Abandon Forever Such Fantasies Of The Supernal. He Would Learn To Perceive In Water, Leaves And Silence More Than Sufficient Of The Absolute And Marvelous, More Than Enough To Console Him For The Loss Of The Ancient Dream.

Rocks, Like Louseworts And Snail Darters And Pupfish And 3rdworld Black, Lesbian, Feminist, Militant Poets, Have Rights, Too. Especially The Right To Exist.

Through Logic And Inference We Can Prove Anything. Therefore, Logic And Inference, In Contrast To Ordinary Daily Living Experience, Are Secondary Instruments Of Knowledge. Probably Tertiary.

There's Another Disadvantage To The Use Of The Flashlight: Like Many Other Mechanical Gadgets It Tends To Separate A Man From The World Around Him. If I Switch It On My Eyes Adapt To It And I Can See Only The Small Pool Of Light It Makes In Front Of Me; I Am Isolated. Leaving The Flashlight In My Pocket Where It Belongs, I Remain A Part Of The Environment I Walk Through And My Vision Though Limited Has No Sharp Or Definite Boundary.

Humankind Will Not Be Free Until The Last Kremlin Commissar Is Strangled With The Entrails Of The Last Pentagon Chief Of Staff.

Men Love Their Ideas More Than Their Lives. And The More Preposterous The Idea, The More Eager They Are To Die For It. And To Kill For It.

If There's Anyone Still Present Whom I've Failed To Insult . . . I Apologize.

Nothing Can Excel A Few Days In Jail For Giving A Young Man Or Woman A Quick Education In The Basis Of Industrial Society.

Wilderness Begins In The Human Mind.

Mayonnaise, Like Hollandaise, Was Invented By The French To Cover Up The Flavor Of Spoiled Flesh, Stale Vegetables, Rotten Fish. Beware The Sauce! Where Food Comes Beslobbered With An Elegant Slime You May Well Suspect The Integrity Of The Basic Ingredients.

Appearance Versus Reality? Appearance Is Reality, God Damn It!

I'm A Humanist; I'd Rather Kill A Man Than A Snake.

I Always Write With My .357 Magnum Handy. Why? Well, You Never Know When God May Try To Interfere.

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step, Not With A Turn Of The Ignition Key.

Music Begins Where Words Leave Off. Music Expresses The Inexpressible. If There Is A Kingdom Of Heaven, It Lies In Music.

A Good Book Is A Kind Of Paper Club, Serving To Rouse The Slumbrous And To Silence The Obtuse.

When The Biggest, Richest, Glassiest Buildings In Town Are The Banks, You Know That Town's In Trouble.

The Best American Writers Have Come From The Hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most Of Them Never Even Went To College.

Walking Takes Longer... Than Any Other Known Form Of Locomotion Except Crawling. Thus It Stretches Time And Prolongs Life. Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

Native American

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.

When A Writer Has Done The Best That He Can Do, He Should Then Withdraw From The Book-writing Business And Take Up An Honest Trade Like Shoe Repair, Cattle Stealing, Or Screwworm Management.

The Death Penalty Would Be Even More Effective, As A Deterrent, If We Executed A Few Innocent People More Often.

There Is A Wine Called Easy Days And Mellow Nights, Well-known On The Outskirts Of The Navajo Reservation. It Is An Economical Wine, Fortified With The Best Of Intentions, And I Recommend It To Every Serious Wino.

We Are Kindred All Of Us, Killer And Victim, Predator And Prey, Me And The Sly Coyote, The Soaring Buzzard, The Elegant Gopher Snake, And Trembling Cottontail, The Foul Worms That Feed On Our Entrails; All Of Them, All Of Us. Long Live Diversity, Long Live The Earth!

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

Baseball Is A Slow, Sluggish Game, With Frequent And Trivial Interruptions, Offering The Spectator Many Opportunities To Reflect At Leisure Upon The Situation On The Field: This Is What A Fan Loves Most About The Game

How Long Does It Take To Write A Good Book? All Of The Years That You've Lived.

Be As I Am - A Reluctant Enthusiast....a Part-time Crusader, A Half-hearted Fanatic....so Get Out There And Hunt And Fish And Mess Around With Your Friends, Ramble Out Yonder And Explore The Forests, Climb The Mountains, Bag The Peaks, Run The Rivers, Breathe Deep Of That Yet Sweet And Lucid Air, Sit Quietly For A While And Contemplate The Precious Stillness, The Lovely, Mysterious, And Awesome Space.

Industrial Tourism Is A Threat To The National Parks. But The Chief Victims Of The System Are The Motorized Tourists. They Are Being Robbed And Robbing Themselves. So Long As They Are Unwilling To Crawl Out Of Their Cars They Will Not Discover The Treasures Of The National Parks And Will Never Escape The Stress And Turmoil Of The Urban-suburban Complexes Which They Had Hoped, Presumably, To Leave Behind For A While.

If Industrial Man Continues To Multiply His Numbers And Expand His Operations He Will Succeed In His Apparent Intention, To Seal Himself Off From The Natural And Isolate Himself Within A Synthetic Prison Of His Own Making.

At Some Point We Must Draw A Line Across The Ground Of Our Home And Our Being, Drive A Spear Into The Land And Say To The Bulldozers, Earthmovers, Government And Corporations, "thus Far And No Further." If We Do Not, We Shall Later Feel, Instead Of Pride, The Regret Of Thoreau, That Good But Overly-bookish Man, Who Wrote, Near The End Of His Life, "if I Repent Of Anything It Is Likely To Be My Good Behaviour.

May Your Rivers Flow Without End... Down Into A Desert Of Red Rock, Blue Mesas, Domes And Pinnacles And Grottos Of Endless Stone, And Down Again Into A Deep Vast Ancient Unknown Chasm Where Bars Of Sunlight Blaze On Profiled Cliffs... Where Something Strange And More Beautiful And More Full Of Wonder Than Your Deepest Dreams Waits For You-beyond That Next Turning Of The Canyon Walls.

It's A Fool's Life, A Rogue's Life, And A Good Life If You Keep Laughing All The Way To The Grave.

Cold Morning On Aztec Peak Fire Lookout. First, Build Fire In Old Stove. Second, Start Coffee. Then, Heat Up Last Night's Pork Chops And Spinach For Breakfast. Why Not? And Why The Hell Not?

I Suppose Each Of Us Has His Own Fantasy Of How He Wants To Die. I Would Like To Go Out In A Blaze Of Glory, Myself, Or Maybe Simply Disappear Someday, Far Out In The Heart Of The Wilderness I Love, All By Myself, Alone With The Universe And Whatever God May Happen To Be Looking On. Disappear - And Never Return. That's My Fantasy.

The Desert Wears... A Veil Of Mystery. Motionless And Silent It Evokes In Us An Elusive Hint Of Something Unknown, Unknowable, About To Be Revealed. Since The Desert Does Not Act It Seems To Be Waiting -- But Waiting For What?

To Be Alive Is To Take Risks; To Be Always Safe And Secure Is Death.

Balance, That's The Secret. Moderate Extremism. The Best Of Both Worlds.

Liberty Cannot Be Guaranteed By Law. Nor By Any Thing Else Except The Resolution Of Free Citizens To Defend Their Liberties.

May Your Trails Be Dim, Lonesome, Stony, Narrow, Winding And Only Slightly Uphill. May The Wind Bring Rain For The Slickrock Potholes Fourteen Miles On The Other Side Of Yonder Blue Ridge. May God's Dog Serenade Your Campfire, May The Rattlesnake And The Screech Owl Amuse Your Reverie, May The Great Sun Dazzle Your Eyes By Day And The Great Bear Watch Over You By Night.

Saving The World Is Only A Hobby. Most Of The Time I Do Nothing.

A Man Is Not Aware Of His Virtues (if Any). Nevertheless, One Hopes That They Exist.

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