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Pure Science Is A Myth: Both Mathematical Theoreticians Like Albert Einstein And Practical Crackpots Like Henry Ford Dealt With Different Aspects Of The Same World.

-Edward Abbey

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Pure Science Is A

Edward Abbey

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Pure Science Is A Myth: Both Mathematical Theoreticians Like Albert Einstein And Practical Crackpots Like Henry Ford Dealt With Different Aspects Of The Same World.

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

A Shelf Of Classics For Our Young Adults: Tolkien, Hesse, Casteneda, Kerouac, Salinger, Tom Robbins, And _the Last Whole Earth Catalog_.

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

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.

Let Us Praise The Noble Turkey Vulture: No One Envies Him; He Harms Nobody; And He Contemplates Our Little World From A Most Serene And Noble Height.

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.

In Writing, Fidelity To Fact Leads Eventually To The Poetry Of Truth.

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

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.

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

Cowboys Make Better Lovers: Ask Any Cow.

The National Parks Belong To Everyone. To The People. To All Of Us. The Government Keeps Saying So And Maybe, In This One Case At Least, The Government Is Telling The Truth. Hard To Believe, But Possible.

Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

Nothing Could Be More Reckless Than To Base One's Moral Philosophy On The Latest Pronouncements Of Science.

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

We Live In The Kind Of World Where Courage Is The Most Essential Of Virtues; Without Courage, The Other Virtues Are Useless.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.'

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

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.

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.

And If The Computer Gives You Any Back Talk, Pour Some Well-sugared Office Coffee Into Its Evil Little Silicon Brain.

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

When The Situation Is Desperate, It Is Too Late To Be Serious. Be Playful.

Women Truly Are Better Than Men. Otherwise, They'd Be Intolerable.

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.

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.

A True Libertarian Supports Free Enterprise, Opposes Big Business; Supports Local Self-government, Opposes The Nation-state; Supports The National Rifle Association, Opposes The Pentagon.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Wilderness. The Word Itself Is Music.

That Which Today Calls Itself Science Gives Us More And More Information, And Indigestible Glut Of Information, And Less And Less Understanding.

A World Without Open Country Would Be Universal Jail.

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.

The Earth, Like The Sun, Like The Air, Belongs To Everyone - And To No One.

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

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

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.

Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

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

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

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

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.

A Journey Into The Wilderness Is The Freest, Cheapest, Most Nonprivileged Of Pleasures. Anyone With Two Legs And The Price Of A Pair Of Army Surplus Combat Boots May Enter.

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

Only The Half-mad Are Wholly Alive.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Phoenix, Arizona: An Oasis Of Ugliness In The Midst Of A Beautiful Wasteland.

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

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

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.

The Hawk's Cry Is As Sharp As Its Beak.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

It's All Still There In Heart And Soul. The Walk, The Hills, The Sky, The Solitary Pain And Pleasure-they Will Grow Larger, Sweeter, Lovelier In The Days And Years To Come.

When The Writer Has Done His Best, He Then Should Proceed To Do His Second Best.

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

Suicide: Don't Knock It If You Ain't Tried It.

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

All Forms Of Government Are Pernicious, Including Good Government.

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.

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

There Are Some Good Things To Be Said About Walking. Not Many, But Some. Walking Takes Longer, For Example, 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. I Have A Friend Who's Always In A Hurry; He Never Gets Anywhere. Walking Makes The World Much Bigger And Thus More Interesting. You Have Time To Observe The Details. The Utopian Technologists Foresee A Future For Us In Which Distance Is Annihilated... To Be Everywhere At Once Is To Be Nowhere Forever, If You Ask Me.

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

Going To Bed With Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, Or Margaret Thatcher: There Are Some Things One Prefers Neither To Do Nor To Have Done.

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

The Most Common Form Of Terrorism In The U.s.a. Is That Carried On By Bulldozers And Chain Saws.

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

What's The Difference Between The Lone Ranger And God? There Really Is A Lone Ranger.

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.

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

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

Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders.

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.

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

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

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

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

Generally Speaking, It's A Matter Of Only Mild Intellectual Interest To Me Whether The Earth Goes Around The Sun Or The Sun Goes Around The Earth. In Fact, I Don't Care A Rat's Ass Either Way.

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

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

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.

In Art As In Life, Form And Subject, Body And Soul, Are One.

I Wish To Be An Inspector Of Volcanoes. I Want To Study Cloud Formations And Memorize The Wind And Learn By Heart The Habits Of The Ponderosa Pine.

Why Do I Live In The Desert? Because The Desert Is The *locus Dei*.

We Are Befouling And Destroying Our Own Home, We Are Committing A Slow But Accelerating Race Suicide And Life Murder - Planetary Biocide. Now There Is A Mighty Theme For A Mighty Book But A Challenge To Which No Modern Novelist Or Poet Has Yet Responded. Where Is Our Melville, Our Milton, Our Thomas Mann When We Need Him Most?

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

Nature Is Indifferent To Our Love, But Never Unfaithful.

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

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

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

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

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

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

The Ideal Society Can Be Described, Quite Simply, As That In Which No Man Has The Power Of Means To Coerce Others.

My Aunt Ida At Age Eighty-three: 'yeah,' She Said, 'i'll Be Dead Pretty Soon. And Frankly, I Don't Give A Damn.'

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

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.

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.

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.

‎"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

Anarchism Is Founded On The Observation That Since Few Men Are Wise Enough To Rule Themselves, Even Fewer Are Wise Enough To Rule Others.

To Be Everywhere At Once Is To Be Nowhere Forever, If You Ask Me.

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

My Computer Tells Me That In Twenty-five Years There Will Be No More Computers.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

When A Man's Best Friend Is His Dog, That Dog Has A Problem.

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.

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.

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?

Who Needs Astrology? The Wise Man Gets By On Fortune Cookies.

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

If The End Does Not Justify The Means - What Can?

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

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

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

Wilderness And Motors Are Incompatible And The Former Can Best Be Experienced, Understood And Enjoyed When The Machines Are Left Behind Where They Belong -- On The Superhighways And In The Parking Lots, On The Reservoirs And In The Marinas.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Canyon Country Does Not Always Inspire Love. To Many It Appears Barren, Hostile, Repellent - A Fearsome Mostly Waterless Land Of Rock And Heat, Sand Dunes And Quicksand, Cactus, Thornbrush, Scorpion, Rattlesnake, And Agaraphobic Distances. To Those Who See Our Land In That Manner, The Best Reply Is, Yes, You Are Right, It Is A Dangerous And Terrible Place. Enter At Your Own Risk. Carry Water. Avoid The Noonday Sun. Try To Ignore The Vultures. Pray Frequently.

A Leader Leads From In Front, By The Power Of Example. A Ruler Pushes From Behind, By Means Of The Club, The Whip, The Power Of Fear.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Motherhood Is An Essential, Difficult, And Full-time Job. Women Who Do Not Wish To Be Mothers Should Not Have Babies.

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

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

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.

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.

In The Modern World, All Literary Art Is Necessarily Political -- Especially That Which Pretends Not To Be.

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

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

Truth Is Always The Enemy Of Power. And Power The Enemy Of Truth.

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

Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

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.

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.

Man Was Created To Complete The Horse.

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

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.

My Notion Of A Great Novel Is Something Like A Five-hundred-page Shaggy-dog Story, With Only The Punch Line Omitted.

I Wait. Now The Night Flows Back, The Mighty Stillness Embraces And Includes Me; I Can See The Stars Again And The World Of Starlight. I Am Twenty Miles Or More From The Nearest Fellow Human, But Instead Of Loneliness I Feel Loveliness. Loveliness And A Quiet Exultation.

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

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

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

I Am Hopeful, Though Not Full Of Hope, And The Only Reason I Don't Believe In Happy Endings Is Because I Don't Believe In Endings.

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

Within Minutes My 115-mile Walk Through The Desert Hills Becomes A Thing Apart, A Disjunct Reality On The Far Side Of A Bottomless Abyss, Immediately Beyond Physical Recollection.but It's All Still There In My Heart And Soul. The Walk, The Hills, The Sky, The Solitary Pain And Pleasure-they Will Grow Larger, Sweeter, Lovelier In The Days To Come, Like A Treasure Found And Then, Voluntarily, Surrendered. Returned To The Mountains With My Blessing. It Leaves A Golden Glowing On The Mind.

When A Man Must Be Afraid To Drink Freely From His Country's River And Streams That Country Is No Longer Fit To Live In.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m Tired Of Doing What I Don’t Want To Do To Live The Way I Don’t Want To Live.

We Spend More Time Working For Our Labor-saving Machines Than They Do Working For Us.

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.

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.

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

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

There Has Never Been An 'original' Sin: Each Is Quite Banal.

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