Background Image

...

Football Is A Game For Trained Apes. That, In Fact, Is What Most Of The Players Are -- Retarded Gorillas Wearing Helmets And Uniforms. The Only Thing More Debased Is The Surrounding Mob Of Drunken Monkeys Howling The Gorillas On.

-Edward Abbey

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Football Is A Game

Edward Abbey

...

Football Is A Game For Trained Apes. That, In Fact, Is What Most Of The Players Are -- Retarded Gorillas Wearing Helmets And Uniforms. The Only Thing More Debased Is The Surrounding Mob Of Drunken Monkeys Howling The Gorillas On.

Views: 41925

Topic

More From Edward Abbey

Wealth And How To Achieve It: Let Us Define The Wealthy Man As He Who Has Everything He Desires. How To Reach That Happy Condition? Two Ways

A Life Without Tragedy Would Not Be Worth Living.

I Believe That There Is A Kind Of Poetry, Even A Kind Of Truth, In Simple Fact.

My Loyalties Will Not Be Bound By National Borders, Or Confined In Time By One Nation's History, Or Limited In The Spiritual Dimension By One Language And Culture. I Pledge My Allegiance To The Damned Human Race, And My Everlasting Love To The Green Hills Of Earth, And My Intimations Of Glory To The Singing Stars, To The Very End Of Space And Time.

Only The Half-mad Are Wholly Alive.

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

Places: A Cold, Bleak, Lonely Day On The Rim At Muley Point, Utah. And The Heart-cracking Loveliness Of The Blood-smeared, Bitter, Incomprehensible Slaughterhouse Of A World.

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.

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

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.

Are People More Important Than The Grizzly Bear? Only From The Point Of View Of Some People.

Cowboys Make Better Lovers: Ask Any Cow.

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.

Apuleius Married A Rich Widow, Then Wrote _the Golden Ass_.

Men Have Never Loved One Another Much, For Reasons We Can Readily Understand: Man Is Not A Lovable Animal.

The Industrial Corporation Is The Natural Enemy Of Nature.

Government Should Be Weak, Amateurish And Ridiculous. At Present, It Fulfills Only A Third Of The Role.

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

But Of The Seven Deadly Sins, Wrath Is The Healthiest - Next Only To Lust.

Wilderness. The Word Itself Is Music.

I Am My Brother's Keeper, Says The Chickenshit Liberal. Perhaps He Does Not Realize That He Now Has More Than 2 1/2 Billion Brothers.

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

I've Never Yet Read A Review Of One Of My Own Books That I Couldn't Have Written Much Better Myself.

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

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

The Extreme Clarity Of The Desert Light Is Equaled By The Extreme Individuation Of Desert Life Forms. Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

The Ideal Kitchen-sink Novel: Throw In Everything But The Kitchen Sink. Then Add The Kitchen Sink.

All Dams Are Ugly, But The Glen Canyon Dam Is Sinful Ugly.

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

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.

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

Doctrines Like Christianity Or Islam Or Marxism Require Unanimity Of Belief. One Dissenter Casts Doubt On The Creed Of Millions.

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

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

No Man-made Structure In All Of American History Has Been Hated So Much, By So Many, For So Long, With Such Good Reason, As That Glen Canyon Dam At Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital Of Coconino County.

Belief In God? An Afterlife? I Believe In Rock: This Apodictic Rock Beneath My Feet.

A World Without Huge Regions Of Total Wilderness Would Be A Cage; A World Without Lions And Tigers And Vultures And Snakes And Elk And Bison Would Be - Will Be - A Human Zoo. A High-tech Slum.

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

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

We Are Preoccupied With Time. If We Could Learn To Love Space As Deeply As We Are Now Obsessed With Time, We Might Discover A New Meaning In The Phrase To Live Like Men.

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

What Draws Us Into The Desert Is The Search For Something Intimate In The Remote.

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.

Opera: I Like It, Except For All Those Howling Sopranos And Caterwauling Tenors. (why Can't Tenors Sing Like Men?)

Charity Should Be Spontaneous. Calculated Altruism Is An Affront.

Though I've Lived In The Rural West Most Of My Life, I Never Once Fell In Love With A Horse. Not Once. Neither End.

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

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

What Ideal, Immutable Platonic Cloud Could Equal The Beauty And Perfection Of Any Ordinary Everyday Cloud Floating Over, Say, Tuba City, Arizona, On A Hot Day In June?

To The Intelligent Man Or Woman, Life Appears Infinitely Mysterious. But The Stupid Have An Answer For Every Question.

Water, Water, Water....there Is No Shortage Of Water In The Desert But Exactly The Right Amount , A Perfect Ratio Of Water To Rock, Water To Sand, Insuring That Wide Free Open, Generous Spacing Among Plants And Animals, Homes And Towns And Cities, Which Makes The Arid West So Different From Any Other Part Of The Nation. There Is No Lack Of Water Here Unless You Try To Establish A City Where No City Should Be.

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

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

‎"if My Decomposing Carcass Helps Nourish The Roots Of A Juniper Tree Or The Wings Of A Vulture--that Is Immortality Enough For Me. And As Much As Anyone Deserves." E.abbey

The Purpose And Function Of Government Is Not To Preside Over Change But To Prevent Change. By Political Methods When Unavoidable, By Violence When Convenient.

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

In This Glare Of Brilliant Emptiness, In This Arid Intensity Of Pure Heat, In The Heart Of A Weird Solitude, Great Silence And Grand Desolution, All Things Recede To Distrances Out Of Reach, Relecting Light But Impossible To Touch, Annihilating All Thought And All That Men Have Made To A Spasm Of Whirling Dust Far Out On The Golden Desert.

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

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.

Yes, There Are Plenty Of Heroes And Heroines Everywhere You Look. They Are Not Famous People. They Are Generally Obscure And Modest People Doing Useful Work, Keeping Their Families Together And Taking An Active Part In The Health Of Their Communities, Opposing What Is Evil (in One Way Or Another) And Defending What Is Good. Heroes Do Not Want Power Over Others.

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?

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.

There Is Science, Logic, Reason; There Is Thought Verified By Experience. And Then There Is California.

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

It Will Be Objected That A Constantly Increasing Population Makes Resistance And Conservation A Hopeless Battle. This Is True. Unless A Way Is Found To Stabilize The Nation's Population, The Parks Can Not Be Saved. Or Anything Else Worth A Damn. Wilderness Preservation, Like A Hundred Other Good Causes, Will Be Forgotten Under The Overwhelming Pressure Of A Struggle For Mere Survival And Sanity In A Completely Urbanized, Completely Industrialized, Ever More Crowded Environment. For My Own Part I Would Rather Take My Chances In A Thermonuclear War Than Live In Such A World.

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.

A Writer Must Be Hard To Live With: When Not Working He Is Miserable, And When He Is Working He Is Obsessed.

Not All Questions Can Be Answered.

You Can't Belay A Man Who's Falling In Love.

Falling In Love

Epitaphs For A Gravestone: 'please: No Hooliganism'; Or 'es Prohibe Se Hace Agua Aqui'; Or 'no Comment'.

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

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

The Great Question Of Life Is Not The Question Of Death But The Question Of Life. Fear Of Death Shames Us All.

Belief In The Supernatural Reflects A Failure Of The Imagination.

A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

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

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

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

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.

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

You Long For Success? Start At The Bottom; Dig Down.

In The Land Of Bleating Sheep And Braying Jackasses, One Brave And Honest Man Is Bound To Create A Scandal.

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

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

The Missionaries Go Forth To Christianize The Savages - As If The Savages Weren't Dangerous Enough Already.

There Is A Deep, Abiding, Unshakable Satisfaction In A Life Of Complete Failure.

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

Edmund Wilson Was Our Greatest American Literary Critic Because He Was More Than A Literary Critic: He Was A Fearless, Even Radical Judge Of The Society He Lived In. (see, For Example, _a Piece Of My Mind_; _the Cold War And The Income Tax_; The Introduction To _patriotic Gore_.) Our Conventional Critics Cannot Forgive Him For Those Scandalous Lapses In Good Taste.

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

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.

Truth Is Merely Common Sense, Say The Naive Realist. Really? Then Where, Precisely, Is The Location Of--a Rainbow? In The Air? In The Eye? In Between? Or Somewhere Else?

I Have Been Called A Curmudgeon, Which My Obsolescent Dictionary Defines As A "surly, Illmannered, Badtempered Fellow." ... Nowadays, Curmudgeon Is Likely To Refer To Anyone Who Hates Hypocrisy, Cant, Sham, Dogmatic Ideologies, The Pretenses And Evasions Of Euphemism, And Has The Nerve To Point Out Unpleasant Facts And Takes The Trouble To Impale These Sins On The Skewer Of Humor And Roast Them Over The Fires Of Empiric Fact, Common Sense, And Native Intelligence. In This Nation Of Bleating Sheep And Braying Jackasses, It Then Becomes An Honor To Be Labeled Curmudgeon.

Tee Vee Football: One Team Wins, One Team Loses -- They Tie -- Who Cares? And Why?

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?

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.

We Know This Apodictic Rock Beneath Our Feet. That Dogmatic Sun Above Our Heads. The World Of Dreams, The Agony Of Love And The Foresight Of Death. That Is All We Know. And All We Need To Know? Challenge That Statement.

The Fire. The Odor Of Burning Juniper Is The Sweetest Fragrance On The Face Of The Earth, In My Honest Judgment; I Doubt If All The Smoking Censers Of Dante's Paradise Could Equal It. One Breath Of Juniper Smoke, Like The Perfume Of Sagebrush After Rain, Evokes In Magical Catalysis, Like Certain Music, The Space And Light And Clarity And Piercing Strangeness Of The American West. Long May It Burn.

Capitalism Sounds Good In Theory But It Just Doesn't Work.

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.

So I Lived Alone. The First Thing I Did Was Take Off My Pants. Naturally.

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

Let The People Walk. Or Ride Horses, Bicycles, Mules, Wild Pigs-anything-but Keep The Automobiles And The Motorcycles And All Their Motorized Relatives Out. We Have Agreed Not To Drive Our Automobiles Into Cathedrals, Concert Halls, Art Museums, Legislative Assemblies, Private Bedrooms And Other Sanctums Of Our Culture; We Should Treat Our National Parks With The Same Deference, For They, Too, Are Holy Places.

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

The Purpose Of Love, Sex, And Marriage Is The Production And Raising Of Children. But Look About You: Most People Have No Business Having Children. They Are Unqualified, Either Genetically Or Culturally Or Both, To Reproduce Such Sorry Specimens As Themselves. Of All Our Privileges, The License To Breed Is The One Most Grossly Abused.

Why Is It That The Destruction Of Something Created By Humans Is Called Vandalism, Yet The Destruction Of Something Created By God Is Called Development?

Grand Opera Is A Form Of Musical Entertainment For People Who Hate Music.

We Live In A Society In Which It Is Normal To Be Sick; And Sick To Be Abnormal.

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

When Riding My Old Harley A Ninety Per At Midnight Down The Via Roma In Naples, I Kept One Consolation Firmly In Mind: If Anything Goes Wrong, I'll Never Have Time To Regret It.

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.

Has Joy Any Survival Value In The Operations Of Evolution? I Suspect That It Does; I Suspect That The Morose And Fearful Are Doomed To Quick Extinction. Where There Is No Joy There Can Be No Courage; And Without Courage All Other Virtues Are Useless.

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

Climbing K2 Or Floating The Grand Canyon In An Inner Tube; There Are Some Things One Would Rather Have Done Than Do.

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

Representative Government Has Broken Down. Our Politicians Represent Not The People Who Vote For Them But The Commercial Interests Who Finance Their Election Campaigns. We Have The Best Politicians That Money Can Buy.

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.

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 Knowledge That Refuge Is Available, When And If Needed, Makes The Silent Inferno Of The Desert More Easily Bearable. Mountains Complement Desert As Desert Complements City, As Wilderness Complements And Completes Civilization.

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

Ah Yes, The Head Is Full Of Books. The Hard Part Is To Force Them Down Through The Bloodstream And Out Through The Fingers.

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

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

Whenever I Read _time_ Or _newsweek_ Or Such Magazines, I Wash My Hands Afterward. But How To Wash Off The Small But Odious Stain Such Reading Leaves On The Mind?

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

The Writer Concerned More With Technique Than Truth Becomes A Technician, Not An Artist.

How Can I Be So Evil? It Ain't Easy.

Our Modern Industrial Economy Takes A Mountain Covered With Trees, Lakes, Running Streams And Transforms It Into A Mountain Of Junk, Garbage, Slime Pits, And Debris.

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

Writing On The Wall: Will Trade Three Blind Crabs For Two With No Teeth.

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

One Thing Worse Than Self-hatred Is Chiggers.

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

There Are Some Places So Beautiful They Can Make A Grown Man Break Down And Weep.

Every Man Has Two Vocations: His Own And Philosophy.

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

The Latino Military Fare Badly When They Stumble Into War With The Gringos. But In The Torture, Murder, And Massacre Of Their Own People, They Have Always Performed With Brilliance And Elan.

Our Suicidal Poets (plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, Et Al.) Spent Too Much Of Their Lives Inside Rooms And Classrooms When They Should Have Been Trudging Up Mountains, Slogging Through Swamps, Rowing Down Rivers. The Indoor Life Is The Next Best Thing To Premature Burial.

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

Of All Bores, The Worst Is The Sparkling Bore.

I'm Happy To Respect Authority When It's Genuine Authority, Based On Moral Or Intellectual Or Even Technical Superiority. I'm Eager To Follow A Hero If We Can Find One. But I Tend To Resist Or Evade Any Kind Of Authority Based Merely On The Power To Coerce. Government, For Example. The Army Tried To Train Us To Salute The Uniform, Not The Man. Failed. I Will Salute The Man, Maybe, If I Think He's Worthy Of It, But I Don't Salute Uniforms Anymore.

Why Do I Write? I Write To Entertain My Friends And To Exasperate Our Enemies. To Unfold The Folded Lie, To Record To Truth Of Our Time, And, Of Course, To Promote Esthetic Bliss.

I Hate Intellectual Discussion. When I Hear The Words 'phenomenology' Or 'structuralism', I Reach For My Buck Knife.

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

The Tragic Sense Of Life: Our Heroic Acceptance Of The Suffering Of Others.

Suffering Of Others

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

World Literature

I'm In Favor Of Animal Liberation. Why? Because I'm An Animal.

Whenever I See A Photograph Of Some Sportsman Grinning Over His Kill, I Am Always Impressed By The Striking Moral And Esthetic Superiority Of The Dead Animal To The Live One.

The Ever-rising Cost Of Living: Someday Soon, The Corporate Technicians Will Be Locking Meters On Our Noses And Charging Us A Royalty On The Air We Breathe.

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.

All Forms Of Government Are Pernicious, Including Good Government.

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.

Music Is A Savage Art, A Measured Madness.

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

If You're Never Ridden A Fast Horse At A Dead Run Across A Desert Valley At Dawn, Be Of Good Cheer: You've Only Missed Out On One Half Of Life.

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

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.

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

The Dog's Life Is A Good Life, For A Dog.

Our Job Is To Record, Each In His Own Way, This World Of Light And Shadow And Time That Will Never Come Again Exactly As It Is Today.

In The First Place You Can't See Anything From A Car; You've Got To Get Out Of The Goddamned Contraption And Walk, Better Yet Crawl, On Hands And Knees, Over The Sandstone And Through The Thornbush And Cactus. When Traces Of Blood Begin To Mark Your Trail You'll Begin To See Something, Maybe. Probably Not.

We Need The Possibility Of Escape As Surely As We Need Hope.

In A Nation Of Sheep, One Brave Man Forms A Majority.

Preacher To Me: 'a Dollar For The Lord, Brother?' Me To Preacher: 'that's All Right, I'm Headed His Way. I'll Give It To Him When I See Him.'

The Most Common Form Of Terrorism In The U.s.a. Is That Carried On By Bulldozers And Chainsaws. It Is Not Enough To Understand The Natural World; The Point Is To Defend And Preserve It. Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

We Need Wilderness Whether Or Not We Ever Set Foot In It. We Need A Refuge Even Though We May Never Need To Go There. We Need The Possibility Of Escape As Surely As We Need Hope.

If America Could Be, Once Again, A Nation Of Self-reliant Farmers, Craftsmen, Hunters, Ranchers, And Artists, Then The Rich Would Have Little Power To Dominate Others. Neither To Serve Nor To Rule: That Was The American Dream.

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.

From The Point Of View Of A Tapeworm, Man Was Created By God To Serve The Appetite Of The Tapeworm.

Abolition Of A Woman's Right To Abortion, When And If She Wants It, Amounts To Compulsory Maternity: A Form Of Rape By The State.

Girls, Like Flowers, Bloom But Once. But Once Is Enough.

I Thought Of The Wilderness We Had Left Behind Us, Open To Sea And Sky, Joyous In Its Plenitude And Simplicity, Perfect Yet Vulnerable, Unaware Of What Is Coming, Defended By Nothing, Guarded By No One.

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

I Am Not An Atheist But An Earthiest. Be True To The Earth.

We Should Restore The Practice Of Dueling. It Might Improve Manners Around Here.

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

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

Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders.

The Sneakiest Form Of Literary Subtlety, In A Corrupt Society, Is To Speak The Plain Truth. The Critics Will Not Understand You; The Public Will Not Believe You; Your Fellow Writers Will Shake Their Heads. Laughter, Praise, Honors, Money, And The Love Of Beautiful Girls Will Be Your Only Reward.

Guns Don't Kill People; People Kill People. Of Course, People With Guns Kill More People. But That's Only Natural. It's Hard. But It's Fair.

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

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.

The Feminists Have A Legitimate Grievance. But So Does Everyone Else.

The Longest Journey Begins With A Single Step, Not With The Turn Of An Ignition Key. That’s The Best Thing About Walking, The Journey Itself. It Doesn’t Much Matter Whether You Get Where You’re Going Or Not. You’ll Get There Anyway. Every Good Hike Brings You Eventually Back Home. Right Where You Started.

Society Is Like A Stew. If You Don't Stir It Up Every Once In A While Then A Layer Of Scum Floats To The Top.

The Feminist Notion That The Whole Of Human History Has Been Nothing But A Vast Intricate Conspiracy By Men To Enslave Their Wives, Mothers, Daughters, And Sisters Presents Us With An Intellectual Neurosis For Which We Do Not Yet Have A Name.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

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.

We Live In A Time Of Twin Credulities: The Hunger For The Miraculous Combined With A Servile Awe Of Science. The Mating Of The Two Gives Us Superstition Plus Scientism -- A Mongoloid Metaphysic.

Saving The World Was Merely A Hobby. My *vocation* Has Been That Of Inspector Of Desert Water Holes.

There Are Only Two Kinds Of Books -- Good Books And The Others. The Good Are Winnowed From The Bad Through The Democracy Of Time.

The Function Of An Ideal Is Not To Be Realized But, Like That Of The North Star, To Serve As A Guiding Point.

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.

A Pretty Girl Can Do No Wrong.

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

The One Great Gift To Humankind From Our Nuclear Physicists Has Been The Nuclear Bomb. How Can We Ever Thank Them?

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

Trending Author

Pierre Bourdieu

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Category