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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.

-Edward Abbey

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It Will Be Objected

Edward Abbey

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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.

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Strolling On, It Seems To Me That The Strangeness And Wonder Of Existence Are Emphasized Here, In The Desert, By The Comparative Sparsity Of The Flora And Fauna: Life Not Crowded Upon Life As In Other Places But Scattered Abroad In Spareness And Simplicity, With A Generous Gift Of Space For Each Herb And Bush And Tree, Each Stem Of Grass, So That The Living Organism Stands Out Bold And Brave And Vivid Against The Lifeless Sand And Barren Rock. The Extreme Clarity Of The Desert Light Is Equaled By The Extreme Individuation Of Desert Life-forms. Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

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

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.

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

Reply To Plato: I Seen Horses I Seen Cows I Haint Never Yet Seen Horsiness Nor That There Bovinity Neither.

Night And Day The River Flows. If Time Is The Mind Of Space, The River Is The Soul Of The Desert. Brave Boatmen Come, They Go, They Die, The Voyage Flows On Forever. We Are All Canyoneers. We Are All Passengers On This Little Mossy Ship, This Delicate Dory Sailing Round The Sun That Humans Call The Earth. Joy, Shipmates, Joy.

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.

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.

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.

Romanticism Was More Than Merely An Alternative To A Sterile Classicism; Romanticism Made Possible, Especially In Art, A Great Expansion Of The Human Consciousness.

The Axiom Of Conditioned Repetition, Like The Binomial Theorem, Is Nothing But A Piece Of Insolence.

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

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.

We're All Undesirable Elements From Somebody's Point Of View.

Little Boys Love Machines; Girls Adore Horses; Grown-up Men And Women Like To Walk.

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.

Only A Fool Is Astonished By The Foolishness Of Mankind.

In Marriage, The Occasional Catastrophic Crisis Is Easier To Manage Than The Daily Routine.

There Are Circumstances In Which Suicide Presents A Viable Option; A Workable Alternative; The Only Sensible Solution.

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

I'm A Fastidious Sort Of Fellow, Fond Of Watermelon And Buckbrush Nuts.

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

Wealth Should Come Like Manna From Heaven, Unearned And Uncalled For. Money Should Be Like Grace -- A Gift. It Is Not Worth Sweating And Scheming For.

One Thing Worse Than Self-hatred Is Chiggers.

Man's Deliberate Destruction Of His Own Habitat -- Planet Earth -- Could Serve As A Mighty Theme For A Mighty Book Worthy Of A Modern Melville Or Tolstoy. But Our Best Fictioneers Confine Themselves To Domestic Drama -- Soap Opera With Literary Trimmings.

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 Basic Science Is Not Physics Or Mathematics But Biology -- The Study Of Life. We Must Learn To Think Both Logically And Bio-logically.

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.

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.

Most Of My Wandering In The Desert I've Done Alone. Not So Much From Choice As From Necessity - I Generally Prefer To Go Into Places Where No One Else Wants To Go. I Find That In Contemplating The Natural World My Pleasure Is Greater If There Are Not Too Many Others Contemplating It With Me, At The Same Time.

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

Anywhere, Anytime, I'd Sacrifice The Finest Nuance For A Laugh, The Most Elegant Trope For A Smile.

God Is Love? Not Bloody Likely.

If The World Is Irrational, We Can Never Know It -- Either It Or Its Irrationality.

The Rifle And Handgun Are 'equalizers' -- The Weapons Of A Democracy. Tanks And Bombers Represent Dictatorship.

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

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.

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

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?

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.

The Duty Of A Patriot Is To Protect His Country From Its Government.

Great Art Is Never Perfect; Perfect Art Is Never Great.

An Economic System Which Can Only Expand Or Expire Must Be False To All That Is Human.

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.

Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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.

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

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

What Is Reason? Knowledge Informed By Sympathy, Intelligence In The Arms Of Love.

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.

The Best Argument For Christianity Is The Gregorian Chant. Listening To That Music, One Can Believe Anything -- While The Music Lasts.

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

Everyone Should Learn A Manual Trade: It's Never Too Late To Become An Honest Person.

The Function Of Football, Soccer, Basketball And Other Passion-sports In Modern Industrial Society Is The Transference Of Boredom, Frustration, Anger And Rage Into Socially Acceptable Forms Of Combat. A Temporary Substitute For War; For Nationalism; Identification With Something Bigger Than The Self.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Of Course I Litter The Public Highway. Every Chance I Get. After All, It's Not The Beer Cans That Are Ugly; It's The Highway That Is Ugly.

Indolence And Melancholy: Each Generates The Other. If One Can Speak Of Such Feeble Passions As Generating Anything.

The More Fantastic An Ideology Or Theology, The More Fanatic Its Adherents.

Recorded History Is Largely An Account Of The Crimes And Disasters Committed By Banal Little Men At The Levers Of Imperial Machines.

Alaska Is Our Biggest, Buggiest, Boggiest State. Texas Remains Our Largest Unfrozen State. But Mountainous Utah, If Ironed Out Flat, Would Take Up More Space On A Map Than Either.

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

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!

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.

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

Scientific Method

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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.

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

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

I Understand And Sympathize With The Reasonable Needs Of A Reasonable Number Of People On A Finite Continent. All Life Depends Upon Other Life. But What Is Happening Today, In North America, Is Not Rational Use But Irrational Massacre. Man The Pest, Multiplied To The Swarming Stage, Is Attacking The Remaining Forests Like A Plague Of Locusts On A Field Of Grain.

Of All Bores, The Worst Is The Sparkling Bore.

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

War: First Day In The U.s. Army, The Government Placed A Bible In My Left Hand, A Bayonet In The Other.

Wilderness Begins In The Human Mind.

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

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.

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

As Between The Skulking And Furtive Poacher, Who Hunts For The Sake Of Meat, And The Honest Gentleman Shooter, Who Kills For The Pleasure Of Sport, I Find The Former A Higher Type Of Humanity.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

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

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

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.

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.

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

A Genius Is Always On Duty; Even His Dreams Are Tax Deductible.

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

What Good Is A Bill Of Rights That Does Not Include The Right To Play, To Wander, To Explore, The Right To Stillness And Solitude, To Discovery And Physical Freedom?

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.

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 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.

Humans Were Free Before The Word Freedom Became Necessary.

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.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

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.

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

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

Only The Half-mad Are Wholly Alive.

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.

This Is The Most Beautiful Place On Earth. There Are Many Such Places. Every Man, Every Woman, Carries In Heart And Mind The Image Of The Ideal Place, The Right Place, The One True Home, Known Or Unknown, Actual Or Visionary.

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?

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

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!

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

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

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

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

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue. One Kid On A Riverbank Working Out A Stephen Foster Tune On His New Harmonica Heard From The Correct Esthetic Distance Projects More Magic And Power Than The Entire Vienna Philharmonic And Chorus Laboring (once Again) Through The Mozart Requiem Or Bach's B Minor Mass.

In The American Southwest, I Began A Lifelong Love Affair With A Pile Of Rock.

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.

Homosexuality, Like Androgyny, Might Be An Instinctive Racial Response To Overpopulation, Crowding, And Stress. Both Flourish When Empire Reaches Its Apogee.

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

I've Wrecked And Ravaged Half My Life In The Pursuit Of Women, And I Suffer The Pangs Of About Seventeen Regrets -- The Seventeen Who Got Away.

If We Had The Power Of Ten Shakespeares Or A Dozen Mozarts, We Could Not Produce Anything Half So Marvelous As One Ordinary Human Child.

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

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

The Love Of Wilderness Is More Than A Hunger For What Is Always Beyong Reach; It Is Also An Expression Of Loyalty To The Earth, The Earth Which Bore Us And Sustains Us, The Only Paradise We Shall Ever Know, The Only Paradise We Ever Need, If Only We Had The Eyes To See.

A Good Philosopher Is One Who Does Not Take Ideas Seriously.

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

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.

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.

Narrow-minded Provincialism: Sad To Say But True - I Am More Interested In The Mountain Lions Of Utah, The Wild Pigs Of Arizona, Than I Am In The Fate Of All The Arabs Of Araby, All The Wogs Of Hindustan, All The Ethiopes Of Abyssinia.

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

Beware Of The Man Who Has No Enemies.

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

I Would Prefer To Write About Everything; What Else Is There? But One Must Be Selective.

I Would Like To Evoke The Sense Of Wonder And Magic In The Reader But Without Invoking The Mystical, The Supernatural Or The Transcendent.

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.

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

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.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Love Flowers Best In Openness And Freedom.

Flora And Fauna

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.

Some Of My Ancestors Fought In The American Revolution. A Few More Wore Red Coats, A Few Wore Blue Coats, And The Rest Wore No Coats At All. We Never Did Figure Out Who Won That War.

Jesus Don't Walk On Water No More; His Feet Leak.

The Gurus Come From The Sickliest Nation On Earth To Tell Us How To Live. And We Pay Them For It.

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

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

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

There's Nothing So Obscene And Depressing As An American Christmas.

Those Art Lovers Who Pride Themselves Mostly On *taste* Usually Possess No Other Talent.

I Would Not Sacrifice A Single Living Mesquite Tree For Any Book Ever Written. One Square Mile Of Living Desert Is Worth A Hundred 'great Books' - And One Brave Deed Is Worth A Thousand.

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

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.

Of All The Featherless Beasts, Only Man, Chained By His Self-imposed Slavery To The Clock, Denies The Elemental Fire And Proceeds As Best He Can About His Business, Suffering Quietly, Martyr To His Madness. Much To Learn.

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.

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

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.

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

Terrorism: Deadly Violence Against Humans And Other Living Things, Usually Conducted By Government Against Its Own People.

Good Writing Can Be Defined As Having Something To Say And Saying It Well. When One Has Nothing To Say, One Should Remain Silent. Silence Is Always Beautiful At Such Times.

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

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

The Nuclear Bomb Took All The Fun Out Of War.

Taxation: How The Sheep Are Shorn.

The Greater Your Dreams, The More Terrible Your Nightmares.

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

Government: If You Refuse To Pay Unjust Taxes, Your Property Will Be Confiscated. If You Attempt To Defend Your Property, You Will Be Arrested. If You Resist Arrest, You Will Be Clubbed. If You Defend Yourself Against Clubbing, You Will Be Shot Dead. These Procedures Are Known As The Rule Of Law.

Nature Is Indifferent To Our Love, But Never Unfaithful.

Reincarnation? There Is Such A Thing. What Could Be More Mozartian Than The Nutcracker Suite?

In The World Of Words, One Of My Best-loved Tribes Is The Diatribe.

There Is Beauty, Heartbreaking Beauty, Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

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.

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.

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

Why I Oppose The Nuclear-arms Race: I Prefer The Human Race.

To The Technocrats: Have Mercy On Us. Relax A Bit, Take Time Out For Simple Pleasures. For Example, The Luxuries Of Electricity, Indoor Plumbing, Central Heating, Instant Electronic Communication And Such, Have Taught Me To Relearn And Enjoy The Basic Human Satisfactions Of Dipping Water From A Cold Clear Mountain Stream; Of Building A Wood Fire In A Cast-iron Stove; Of Using Long Winter Nights For Making Music, Making Things, Making Love; Of Writing Long Letters, In Longhand With A Fountain Pen, To The Few People On This Earth I Truly Care About.

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

World Literature

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

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.

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

Wilderness Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity Of The Human Spirit.

All Power Rests On Hierarchy: An Army Is Nothing But A Well-organized Lynch Mob.

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

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.

One Day In Dipstick, Nebraska, Or Landfill, Oklahoma, Is Worth More To Me Than An Eternity In Dante's Plastic Paradiso, Or Yeats's Gold-plated Byzantium.

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.

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.

I Come More And More To The Conclusion That Wilderness, In America Or Anywhere Else, Is The Only Thing Left That Is Worth Saving.

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

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

Cowboys Make Better Lovers: Ask Any Cow.

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.

Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

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