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Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

-Edward Abbey

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Simplicity Is Always A

Edward Abbey

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Simplicity Is Always A Virtue.

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

Freedom Begins Between The Ears.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

My Sole Literary Ambition Is To Write One Good Novel, Then Retire To My Hut In The Desert, Assume The Lotus Position, Compose My Mind And Senses, And Sink Into Meditation, Contemplating My Novel.

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.

Life: Another Day, Another Dolor.

Why The Critics, Like A Flock Of Ducks, Always Move In Perfect Unison: Their Authority With The Public Depends Upon An Appearance Of Unanimous Agreement. One Dissenting Voice Would Shatter The Whole Fragile Structure.

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

The Author: An Imaginary Person Who Writes Real Books.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

For Women, The Sexual Act Is A Means To A Higher End. For A Man, It Is An End In Itself.

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

Trout Fishing. One Must Be A Stickler For Proper Form. Use Nothing But #4 Blasting Caps, Or A Hand Grenade, If Handy, Or At A Pool Well-lined With Stone, One Blast From A .44 Magnum Will Bring A Few Stunned Brookies Quietly To The Surface.

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.

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

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

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.

I Wouldn't Trade A Good Horse For The Best Rolls-royce Ever Made -- Unless I Could Trade The Rolls For Two Good Horses.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

Sentiment Without Action Is The Ruin Of The Soul.

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

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.

Every Moment Is Precious. And Precarious.

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

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

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

Every Man Has Two Vocations: His Own And Philosophy.

All Men Are Brothers, We Like To Say, Half-wishing Sometimes In Secret It Were Not True. But Perhaps It Is True. And Is The Evolutionary Line From Protozoan To Spinoza Any Less Certain? That Also May Be True. We Are Obliged, Therefore, To Spread The News, Painful And Bitter Though It May Be For Some To Hear, That All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

Whatever We Cannot Easily Understand We Call God; This Saves Much Wear And Tear On The Brain Tissues.

It May Be True That There Are No Atheists In Foxholes. But You Don't Find Many Christians There, Either. Or, About As Many Of One As The Other.

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.

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

The Best Thing About Graduating From The University Was That I Finally Had Time To Sit On A Log And Read A Good Book.

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.

If People Persist In Trespassing Upon The Grizzlies' Territory, We Must Accept The Fact That The Grizzlies, From Time To Time, Will Harvest A Few Trespassers.

Poetry -- Even Bad Poetry -- May Be Our Final Hope.

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.

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

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

The Idea Of Wilderness Needs No Defense, It Only Needs Defenders.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Though Men Now Possess The Power To Dominate And Exploit Every Corner Of The Natural World, Nothing In That Fact Implies That They Have The Right Or The Need To Do So.

I Want My Body To Help Fertilize The Growth Of A Cactus Or Cliff Rose Or Sagebrush Or Tree.

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

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

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.

Life Imitates Art -- But Badly.

Literary Critics, Like A Herd Of Cows Or A School Of Fish, Always Face In The Same Direction, Obeying That Love For Unity That Every Critic Requires.

The Rebel Is Doomed To A Violent Death. The Rest Of Us Can Look Forward To Sedated Expiration In A Coma Inside An Oxygen Tent, With Tubes Inserted In Every Bodily Orifice.

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.

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

Nature, Like Maimonides Said, Is Mainly A Good Place To Throw Beer Cans On Sunday Afternoons.

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

I Once Sat On The Rim Of A Mesa Above The Rio Grande For Three Days And Nights, Trying To Have A Vision. I Got Hungry And Saw God In The Form Of A Beef Pie.

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.

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

Alaska's Chief Attractions Are: (a) Its Small And Insignificant Human Population, Thanks To The Miserable Climate; And (b) Its Large And Magnificent Wildlife Population, Thanks To (a). Both Of These Attractions Are Being Rapidly Diminished, However, By (c) The Law Of Growth And Space-age Sleaze.

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.

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.

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

Salome Had But Seven Veils; The Artist Has A Thousand.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

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?

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

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

Not All Questions Can Be Answered.

This World May Be Only Illusion -- But It's The Only Illusion We've Got.

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

Anarchism Is Not A Romantic Fable But The Hardheaded Realization, Based On Five Thousand Years Of Experience, That We Cannot Entrust The Management Of Our Lives To Kings, Priests, Politicians, Generals, And County Commissioners.

A Man Without A Horse Is Like A Man Without A Weapon: Stunted And Naked.

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

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

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

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

I Have Found Through Trial And Error That I Work Best Under Duress. In Fact I Work Only Under Duress.

Trial And Error

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?

Paradise Is The Here And Now, The Actual, Tangible, Dogmatically Real Earth On Which We Stand. Yes, God Bless America, The Earth Upon Which We Stand.

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

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

Music Is A Savage Art, A Measured Madness.

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

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

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

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

Nearly All Of Latin America, From Chile To Mexico, Is One Long Rack Of Torture. Financed, Equipped, And Refined By The U.s. Government.

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.

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.

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.

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

Scientific Method

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

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

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

The Sexual Revolution Transformed The American West: Now Even Cowboys Can Get Laid.

Christian Theology: Nothing So Grotesque Could Possibly Be True.

Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders.

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

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

I Find More And More, As I Grow Older, That I Prefer Women To Men, Children To Adults, Animals To Humans.... And Rocks To Living Things? No, I'm Not That Old Yet.

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.

Life Is Already Too Short To Waste On Speed.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

A Rancher Is A Farmer Who Farms The Public Lands With A Herd Of Four-legged Lawn Mowers.

I Hold No Preference Among Flowers, So Long As They Are Wild, Free, Spontaneous.

Say What You Like About My Bloody Murderous Government,' I Says, 'but Don't Insult Me Poor Bleedin' Country.

Wilderness. The Word Itself Is Music.

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

So I Write Mainly For The Fun Of It, The Hell Of It, The Duty Of It. I Enjoy Writing And Will Probably Be A Scribbler On My Dying Day, Sprawled On Some Stony Trail Halfway Between Two Dry Waterholes.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

World Literature

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.

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

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

My Own Ambition, My Deepest And Truest Ambition, Is To Find Within Myself Someday, Somehow, The Ability To Do Likewise, To Do Nothing - And Find It Enough.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Belief? What Do I Believe In? I Believe In Sun. In Rock. In The Dogma Of The Sun And The Doctrine Of The Rock. I Believe In Blood, Fire, Woman, Rivers, Eagles, Storm, Drums, Flutes, Banjos, And Broom-tailed Horses.

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

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

To Die Alone, On Rock Under Sun At The Brink Of The Unknown, Like A Wolf, Like A Great Bird, Seems To Me Very Good Fortune Indeed.

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

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

Chastity Is More A State Of Mind Than Of Anatomy.

All Serious Writers Want The Obvious Rewards: Fame, Money, Women, Love -- And Most Of All, An Audience!

Too Many American Authors Have A Servile Streak Where Their Backbone Should Be. Where's Our Latest Nobel Laureate? More Than Likely You'll Find Him In The Rose Garden Kissing The First Lady's Foot.

There Is No Trajectory So Pathetic As That Of An Artist In Decline.

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

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

A True Conservative Must Necessarily Be A Conservationist.

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

A Drink A Day Keeps The Shrink Away.

The World Of Employer And Employee, Like That Of Master And Slave, Debases Both.

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

God Is Love? Not Bloody Likely.

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.

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