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Don't Talk To Me About Other Worlds, Separate Realities, Lost Continents Or Invisible Realms -- I Know Where I Belong. Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

-Edward Abbey

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Don't Talk To Me

Edward Abbey

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Don't Talk To Me About Other Worlds, Separate Realities, Lost Continents Or Invisible Realms -- I Know Where I Belong. Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

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It Is The Difference Between Men And Women, Not The Sameness, That Creates The Tension And The Delight.

Every Man Has Two Vocations: His Own And Philosophy.

How Could Anything Non-controversial Be Of Intellectual Interest To Grown-ups?

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.

Reason Has Seldom Failed Us Because It Has Seldom Been Tried.

A Man's Duty? To Be Ready -- With Rifle Or Rood -- To Defend His Home When The Showdown Comes.

My Cousin Elroy Spent Seven Years As An Ibm Taper Staring At Think Signs On The Walls Before He Finally Got A Good Idea: He Quit.

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

Under The Desert Sun, In The Dogmatic Clarity, The Fables Of Theology And The Myths Of Classical Philosophy Dissolve Like Mist. The Air Is Clean, The Rock Cuts Cruelly Into Flesh; Shatter The Rock And The Odor Of Flint Rises To Your Nostrils, Bitter And Sharp. Whirlwinds Dance Across The Salt Flats, A Pillar Of Dust By Day; The Thornbush Breaks Into Flame At Night. What Does It Mean? It Means Nothing. It Is As It Is And Has No Need For Meaning. The Desert Lies Beneath And Soars Beyond Any Possible Human Qualification. Therefore, Sublime.

I Took The Other Road, All Right, But Only Because It Was The Easy Road For Me, The Way I Wanted To Go. If I've Encountered Some Unnecessary Resistance That's Because Most Of The Traffic Is Going The Other Way.

Hierarchical Institutions Are Like Giant Bulldozers -- Obedient To The Whim Of Any Fool Who Takes The Controls.

Most Academic Economists Know Nothing Of Economy. In Fact, They Know Little Of Anything.

There Comes A Point, In Literary Objectivity, When The Author's Self- Effacement Is Hard To Distinguish From Moral Cowardice.

I Know My Own Nation Best. That's Why I Despise It The Most. And Know And Love My Own People, Too, The Swine. I'm A Patriot. A Dangerous Man.

I Was Once Invited To Take Part In A Heroic, Possibly Fatal Enterprise, But I Declined, Mainly On Account Of Sloth.

I Have Written Much About Many Good Places. But The Best Places Of All, I Have Never Mentioned.

A Cowboy Is A Hired Hand On The Middle Of A Horse Contemplating The Hind End Of A Cow.

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

When I Hear The Word 'culture', I Reach For My Checkbook.

The Consolation Of Reading Biography: Most Great Men Have Led Lives Even More Miserable Than Our Own.

Most New Books Drop Immediately Into The Oblivion They So Richly Deserve.

Filling Out The Form: Race? Human. Religion? Paiute. Occupation? Criminal Anarchy. Hobbies? Survival With Honor.

It Is Not Death Or Dying That Is Tragic, But Rather To Have Existed Without Fully Participating In Life- That Is The Deepest Personal Tragedy.

We Can Have Wilderness Without Freedom; We Can Have Wilderness Without Human Life At All, But We Cannot Have Freedom Without Wilderness, We Cannot Have Freedom Without Leagues Of Open Space Beyond The Cities, Where Boys And Girls, Men And Women, Can Live At Least Part Of Their Lives Under No Control But Their Own Desires And Abilities, Free From Any And All Direct Administration By Their Fellow Men.

How Did Haydn And Mozart Produce Such Vast Quantities Of Formally Perfect Art? They Worked From A Perfect Formula. In Music, Beethoven Was The Great Emancipator.

A Mother's Sorrow Is More True, Honorable, And Beautiful Than The Detachment Of The Sage.

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.

A Man On Foot, On Horseback Or On A Bicycle Will See More, Feel More, Enjoy More In One Mile Than The Motorized Tourists Can In A Hundred Miles.

When Guns Are Outlawed, Only The Government Will Have Guns. The Government - And A Few Outlaws. If That Happens, You Can Count Me Among The Outlaws.

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?

As A Confirmed Melancholic, I Can Testify That The Best And Maybe Only Antidote For Melancholia Is Action. However, Like Most Melancholics, I Suffer Also From Sloth.

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.

Science Transcends Mere Politics. As Recent History Demonstrates, Scientists Are As Willing To Work For A Tojo, A Hitler, Or A Stalin As For The Free Nations Of The West.

Capitalism: Nothing So Mean Could Be Right. Greed Is The Ugliest Of The Capital Sins.

One Must Be Reasonable In One's Demands On Life. For Myself, All That I Ask Is: (1) Accurate Information; (2) Coherent Knowledge; (3) Deep Understanding; (4) Infinite Loving Wisdom; (5) No More Kidney Stones, Please.

Deep Understanding

One Thing More Dangerous Than Getting Between A Grizzly Sow And Her Cub Is Getting Between A Businessman And A Dollar Bill.

The Developers And Entrepreneurs Must Somehow Be Taught A New Vocabulary Of Values.

Life: Another Day, Another Dolor.

There Is Beauty, Heartbreaking Beauty, Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

Readers, Not Critics, Are The People Who Determine A Book's Eventual Fate.

The Rich Can Buy Everything But Health, Virtue, Friendship, Wit, Good Looks, Love, Pride, Intelligence, Grace, And, If You Need It, Happiness.

The Domination Of Nature Leads To The Domination Of Human Nature.

The Real Work Of Men Was Hunting Meat. The Invention Of Agriculture Was A Giant Step In The Wrong Direction, Leading To Serfdom, Cities, And Empire. From A Race Of Hunters, Artists, Warriors, And Tamers Of Horses, We Degraded Ourselves To What We Are Now: Clerks, Functionaries, Laborers, Entertainers, Processors Of Information.

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.

In The Modern Technoindustrial Culture, It Is Possible To Proceed From Infancy Into Senility Without Ever Knowing Manhood.

Do I Believe In Ghosts? I Believe In The Ghosts That Haunt The Human Mind.

A Woman, As Much As A Man, Is Responsible By The Age Of Forty For The Character Of Her Face. But Women, Obeying The Biological Imperative, Strive Harder To Preserve A Youthful Appearance (the Reproductive Look) And Lose It Sooner.

Concrete Is Heavy; Iron Is Hard - But The Grass Will Prevail.

Married Couples Who Quarrel Bitterly Every Day May Really Need Each Other As Deeply As Those Who Appear To Be Desperately In Love.

A Cowboy Is A Farm Boy In Leather Britches And A Comical Hat.

I Now Find The Most Marvelous Things In The Everyday, The Ordinary, The Common, The Simple And Tangible.

Women: We Cannot Love Them All. But We Must Try.

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.

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

Scientific Method

Instant Communication Is Not Communication At All But Merely A Frantic, Trivial, Nerve-wracking Bombardment Of Cliches, Threats, Fads, Fashions, Gibberish And Advertising.

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

Life Is Too Short For Grief. Or Regret. Or Bullshit.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

The Most Striking Thing About The Rich Is The Gracious Democracy Of Their Manners -- And The Crude Vulgarity Of Their Way Of Life.

I Would Give Ten Years Off The Beginning Of My Life To See, Only Once, Tyrannosaurus Rex Come Rearing Up From The Elms Of Central Park, A Morgan Police Horse Screaming In Its Jaws. We Can Never Have Enough Of Nature.

Civilization Is A Youth With A Molotov Cocktail In His Hand. Culture Is The Soviet Tank Or L.a. Cop That Guns Him Down.

Molotov Cocktail

How To Avoid Pleurisy: Never Make Love To A Girl Named Candy On The Tailgate Of A Half-ton Ford Pickup During A Chill Rain In April Out On Grandview Point In San Juan County, Utah.

Nobody Has So Many Friends That He Can Afford To Lose One.

All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

By The Age Of Eighteen, A Human Has Acquired Enough Joy And Heartache To Provide The Food Of Reflection For A Century.

The World Exists For Its Own Sake, Not For Ours. Swallow *that* Pill!

The Majority Of American Writers Today Have Chosen Passive Non-resistance To Things As They Are, Producing Sloughs Of Poetry About Their Personal Angst And Anomie, Cascades Of Short Stories And Rivers Of Novels Obsessed With The Nuances Of Domestic Relationships - Suburban Hanky-panky - Chic Boutique Shopping Mall Literary Soap Opera. When They Do Speak Out On Matters Of Controversy They Attack Not The Evils Of Our Time But Fellow Writers Who May Insist On Complaining.

Three Words Remain That Can Yet Stir The Blood Of Man: The Word 'rebellion'; The Word 'revolt'; The Word 'revolution'.

May Your Trails Be Crooked, Winding, Lonesome, Dangerous, Leading To The Most Amazing View. May Your Mountains Rise Into And Above The Clouds.

As Mark Twain Said, 'i Love Wagner -- If Only They'd Cut Out All That Damned Singing!'

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.

Our “neoconservatives” Are Neither New Nor Conservative, But Old As Babylon And Evil As Hell.

The One Thing ... That Is Truly Ugly Is The Climate Of Hate And Intimidation, Created By A Noisy Few, Which Makes The Decent Majority Reluctant To Air In Public Their Views On Anything Controversial. ... Where All Pretend To Be Thinking Alike, It's Likely That No One Is Thinking At All.

God Is A Sound People Make When They're Too Tired To Think Anymore.

As War And Government Prove, Insanity Is The Most Contagious Of Diseases.

Mozart, Striving For Perfection, Wrote The Same Symphony Forty-one Times. In His Case, It Worked. He Wrote A Perfect Symphony.

Let Us Hope Our Weapons Are Never Needed - But Do Not Forget What The Common People Of This Nation Knew When They Demanded The Bill Of Rights: An Armed Citizenry Is The First Defense, The Best Defense, And The Final Defense Against Tyranny.

War? The One War I'd Be Happy To Join Is The War Against Officers.

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

Is There A God? Who Knows? Is There An Angry Unicorn On The Dark Side Of The Moon?

A Drink A Day Keeps The Shrink Away.

The Night I Filled An Inside Straight: Even A Blind Hog's Gonna Root Up An Acorn Once In A While.

Power Is Always Dangerous. Power Attracts The Worst And Corrupts The Best.

Any Hack Can Safely Rail Away At Foreign Powers Beyond The Sea; But A Good Writer Is A Critic Of The Society He Lives In.

I Love America Because It Is A Confused, Chaotic Mess - And I Hope We Can Keep It This Way For At Least Another Thousand Years. The Permissive Society Is The Free Society.

Counterpart To The Knee-jerk Liberal Is The New Knee-pad Conservative, Always Groveling Before The Rich And The Powerful.

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

A World Without Open Country Would Be Universal Jail.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

It's True: Every Time You Kill An Elk, You're Saving Some Cow's Life.

No Man Is Wise Enough To Be Another Man's Master. Each Man's As Good As The Next -- If Not A Damn Sight Better.

There Never Was A Good War Or A Bad Revolution.

For This World That Men Have Made, None Of Us Is Bad Enough. For The World That Made Us, None Is Good Enough.

Style: There Is Something In Too Much Verbal Felicity (as In Joyce Or Nabokov Or Borges) That Can Betray The Writer Into Technique For The Sake Of Technique.

The Tragedy Of Modern War Is That The Young Men Die Fighting Each Other - Instead Of Their Real Enemies Back Home In The Capitals.

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

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.

Each Thing In Its Way, When True To Its Own Character, Is Equally Beautiful. (p 41)

Some People Write To Please, To Soothe, To Console. Others To Provoke, To Challenge, To Exasperate And Infuriate. I've Always Found The Second Approach The More Pleasing.

No Tyranny Is So Irksome As Petty Tyranny: The Officious Demands Of Policemen, Government Clerks, And Electromechanical Gadgets.

The Earth Is Not A Mechanism But An Organism, A Being With Its Own Life And Its Own Reasons, Where The Support And Sustenance Of The Human Animal Is Incidental. If Man In His Newfound Power And Vanity Persists In The Attempt To Remake The Planet In His Own Image, He Will Succeed Only In Destroying Himself - Not The Planet. The Earth Will Survive Our Most Ingenious Folly.

What Is The Purpose Of The Giant Sequoia Tree? The Purpose Of The Giant Sequoia Tree Is To Provide Shade For The Tiny Titmouse.

The Result Of This Bestial Lust Is An Indiscriminate And Promiscuous Splaying Of All Of My Energies- Wanting All, I Accomplish Nothing; Desiring Everything, I Satisfy Nothing And Am Satisfied By Nothing.

Accomplish Nothing

For Myself I Hold No Preferences Among Flowers, So Long As They Are Wild, Free, Spontaneous. Bricks To All Greenhouses! Black Thumb And Cutworm To The Potted Plant!

I Choose To Listen To The River For A While, Thinking River Thoughts, Before Joining The Night And The Stars.

I Have Been A Lucky Man. But Someone Has To Be.

Money Confers The Power To Command The Labor Of Others. Love Of Money Is Love Of Power. And Love Of Power Is The Root Of Evil.

Life Without Music Would Be An Intolerable Insult.

Life Without Music

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.

I, Too, Believe In Fidelity. But How Can I Be True To One Woman Without Being False To All The Others?

Every Writer Has His Favorite Coterie Of Enemies: Mine Is The East Coast Literati -- Those Prep School Playmates And Their Ivy League Colleagues.

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.

I Am Happy To Be A Regional Writer. My Region Is The American West, Old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, The Human Heart, And The Male Groin.

In Order To Write A Book, It Is Necessary To Sit Down (or Stand Up) And Write. Therein Lies The Difficulty.

We Judge Individual Man And Women As We Do Nations And Races -- By The Character Of Their Achievement And By Their Achievement Of Character.

The Highest Treason, The Meanest Treason, Is To Deny The Holiness Of This Little Blue Planet On Which We Journey Through The Cold Void Of Space.

Vladimir Nabokov Was A Writer Who Cared Nothing For Music And Whose Favorite Sport Was The Pursuit, Capture, And Murder Of Butterflies. This Explains Many Things; For Example, The Fact That Nabokov's Novels, For All Their Elegance And Wit, Resemble Nothing So Much As Butterflies Pinned To A Board: Pretty But Dead; Symmetrical But Stiff.

Susan Sontag: What She Really Wanted, Throughout Her Career, Was To Grow Up To Be A Frenchman.

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.

I Always Wanted To Be A Cowboy. But Alas! I Was Burdened Early With Certain Inescapable Obligations To World Literature.

World Literature

What Is Truth? I Don't Know And I'm Sorry I Brought It Up.

To Meet God Or Medusa Face To Face, Even If It Means Risking Everything Human In Myself. I Dream Of A Hard And Brutal Mysticism In Which The Naked Self Merges With The Nonhuman World And Yet Somehow Survives Still Intact Individual, Separate. Paradox And Bedrock.

James Joyce Buried Himself In His Great Work. _finnegan's Wake_ Is His Monument And His Tombstone. A Dead End.

Come With Me, The River Said, Close Your Eyes And Quiet Your Limbs And Float With Me Into The Wonder And Mystery Of The Canyons, See The Unknown And The Little Known, Look Upon The Stone Gods Face To Face, See Medusa, Drink My Waters, Hear My Song, Feel My Power, Come Along And Drift With Me Toward The Distant, Ultimate And Legendary Sea.

The True, Unacknowledged Purpose Of Capital Punishment Is To Inspire Fear And Awe -- Fear And Awe Of The State.

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

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.

World Literature

The Only Thing Left Worth Saving Is Wilderness.

Desire, Said The Buddha, Is The Cause Of Suffering. But Without Desire, What Delight?

J. Edgar Hoover, J. Bracken Lee, J. Parnell Thomas, J. Paul Getty -- You Can Always Tell A Shithead By That Initial Initial.

There Is No Force More Potent In The Modern World Than Stupidity Fueled By Greed.

Once Upon A Time, I Dreamed Of Becoming A Great Man. Later, A Good Man. Now, Finally, I Find It Difficult Enough And Honor Enough To Be -- A Man.

Once Upon A Time

Quantum Mechanics Provides Us With An Approximate, Plausible, Conjectural Explanation Of What Actually Is, Or Was, Or May Be Taking Place Inside A Cyclotron During A Dark Night In February.

America My Country: Last Nation On Earth To Abolish Human Slavery; First Of All Nations To Drop The Nuclear Bomb On Our Fellow Human Beings.

One Can Imagine A Sane, Healthy, Cheerful Human Society Based On No More Than The Principles Of Common Sense, As Validated Each Day By Work, Play, And Living Experience. But This Remains The Most Utopian And Fantastic Of Ideals.

The Author: An Imaginary Person Who Writes Real Books.

What We Need Now Are Heroes And Heroines, About A Million Of Them, One Brave Deed Is Worth A Thousand Books. Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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.

Paradise For A Happy Man Lies In His Own Good Nature.

Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

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.

Might Does Not Make Right But It Sure Makes What Is.

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

Life Is Cruel? Compared To What?

The Love Of A Man For His Wife, His Child, Of The Land Where He Lives And Works, Is For Me The Real Meaning Of Mystical Experience.

The Nuclear Bomb Took All The Fun Out Of War.

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

Cowboys Make Better Lovers: Ask Any Cow.

A Critic Is To An Author As A Fungus To An Oak.

Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

There Are Two Kinds Of People I Cannot Abide: Bigots And Any Well-organized Ethnic Group.

Civilization, Like An Airplane In Flight, Survives Only As It Keeps Going Forward.

Henry James Was Our Master Of Periphrasis -- The Fine Art Of Saying As Little As Possible In The Greatest Number Of Words.

Chastity Is More A State Of Mind Than Of Anatomy.

Nothing Could Be Older Than The Daily News, Nothing Deader Than Yesterday's Newspaper.

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?)

Jack Kerouac, Like A Sick Refrigerator, Worked Too Hard At Keeping Cool And Died On His Mama's Lap From Alcohol And Infantilism.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep; Ugliness Goes All The Way Through.

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

John Updike: Our Greatest Suburban Chic-boutique Man Of Letters. A Smug And Fatal Complacency Has Stunted His Growth Beyond Hope Of Surgical Repair. Not Enough Passion In His Collected Works To Generate Steam In A Beer Can. Nevertheless, He Is Considered By Some Critics To Be America's Finest *living* Author: Hold A Chilled Mirror To His Lips And You Will See, Presently, A Fine And Dewy Moisture Condensing -- Like A Faery Breath! -- Upon The Glass.

The Absurd Vanity Of Metaphysicians Who Like To Imagine That They Create The World By Thinking About It.

What Our Economists Call A Depressed Area Almost Always Turns Out To Be A Cleaner, Freer, More Livable Place Than Most.

If It's Knowledge And Wisdom You Want, Then Seek Out The Company Of Those Who Do Real Work For An Honest Purpose.

The World Is Full Of Burled And Gnarly Knobs On Which You Can Hang A Metaphysical System. If You Must.

The World Is Older And Bigger Than We Are. This Is A Hard Truth For Some Folks To Swallow.

Shakespeare Wrote Great Poetry And Preposterous Plays. Who Really Cares, For Example, Which Petty Tyrant Rules Milan? Or Who Succeeds To The Throne Of Denmark? Or Why The Barons Ganged Up On Richard Ii?

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

What Did Jesus Say To The Headwaiter At The Last Supper? 'separate Checks, Please.'

Anarchy Works. Italy Has Proved It For A Thousand Years.

There Is A Fine Art To Making Enemies And It Requires Diligent Cultivation. It's Not As Easy As It Looks.

Vaughan Telecom Installers And Contractors Ensure The Highest Quality Service For Data And Network Cabling In Toronto And Gta Area.

Death Is Every Man's Final Critic. To Die Well You Must Live Bravely.

Only A Fool Would Leave The Enjoyment Of Rainbows To The Opticians. Or Give The Science Of Optics The Last Word On The Matter.

Somewhere In The Depths Of Solitude, Beyond Wilderness And Freedom, Lay The Trap Of Madness.

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.

Is It Possible To Grow Wiser Without Knowing It? One Hopes So. We All Hope So.

In Both Metaphysics And Art, Honesty Is The Best Policy. Keep It Clean.

Our Big Social Institutions Do Not Reflect Human Nature; They Distort It.

You Can't Study The Darkness By Flooding It With Light.

In History-as-politics, The 'future' Is That Vacuum In Time Waiting To Be Filled With The Antics Of Statesmen.

Be Loyal To What You Love, Be True To The Earth, Fight Your Enemies With Passion And Laughter.

Anarchism? You Bet Your Sweet Betsy. The Only Cure For The Ills Of Democracy Is More Democracy. Much More.

In Metaphysics, The Notion That Earth And All That's On It Is A Mental Construct Is The Product Of People Who Spend Their Lives Inside Rooms. It Is An Indoor Philosophy.

Love Implies Anger. The Man Who Is Angered By Nothing Cares About Nothing.

Roosters: The Cry Of The Male Chicken Is The Most Barbaric Yawp In All Of Nature.

In The Soviet Union, Government Controls Industry. In The United States, Industry Controls Government. That Is The Principal Structural Difference Between The Two Great Oligarchies Of Our Time.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

One Man Alone Can Be Pretty Dumb Sometimes, But For Real Bona Fide Stupidity, There Ain't Nothing Can Beat Teamwork.

It Is An Author's Most Solemn Obligation To Honor Truth. If The Free And Independent Writer Does Not Speak Truth To Power, Who Will?

When I Write "paradise" I Mean Not Only Apple Trees And Golden Women But Also Scorpions And Tarantulas And Flies, Rattlesnakes And Gila Monsters, Sandstorms, Volcanoes And Earthquakes, Bacteria And Bear, Cactus, Yucca, Bladderweed, Ocotillo And Mesquite, Flash Floods And Quicksand, And Yes - Disease And Death And The Rotting Of Flesh.

Disease And Death

Democracy -- Rule By The People -- Sounds Like A Fine Thing; We Should Try It Sometime In America.

Those Who Fear Death Most Are Those Who Enjoy Life Least.

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

In Social Affairs, I'm An Optimist. I Really Do Believe That Our Military- Industrial Civilization Will Soon Collapse.

Critics Are Like Ticks On A Dog Or Tits On A Motor: Ornamental But Dysfunctional.

If You Feel That You're Not Ready To Die, Never Fear; Nature Will Give You Complete And Adequate Assistance When The Time Comes.

Fence Straddlers Have No Balls. In Compensation, However, They Enjoy A Comfortable Seat And Can Retreat Swiftly, When Danger Threatens, To Either Side Of The Fence. There Is Something To Be Said For Every Position.

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.

Those Who Dream Of The Joys Of Living In A Space Colony Should Live In A Space Colony.

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