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

-Edward Abbey

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The World Is Older

Edward Abbey

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

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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.

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?

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

The Artist's Job? To Be A Miracle Worker: Make The Blind See, The Dull Feel, The Dead To Live.

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.

Freedom Begins Between The Ears.

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

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

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

The Best American Writers Have Come From The Hinterlands -- Mark Twain, Theodore Dreiser, Jack London, Hemingway, Faulkner, Wolfe, Steinbeck. Most Of Them Never Even Went To College.

Among Politicians And Businessmen, *pragmatism* Is The Current Term For 'to Hell With Our Children.'

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 Idea Of Wilderness Needs No Defense. It Only Needs More Defenders. Remaining Silent About The Destruction Of Nature Is An Endorsement Of That Destruction.

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

If, As Some Say, Evil Lies In The Hearts And Not The Institutions Of Men, Then There's Hardly A Distinction Worth Making Between, Say, Hitler's Germany And Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.

The Desert Wears... A Veil Of Mystery. Motionless And Silent It Evokes In Us An Elusive Hint Of Something Unknown, Unknowable, About To Be Revealed. Since The Desert Does Not Act It Seems To Be Waiting -- But Waiting For What?

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

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

Art, Science, Philosophy, Religion -- Each Offers At Best Only A Crude Simplification Of Actual Living Experience.

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

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

Longevity, Like Intelligence And Good Looks And Health And Strength Of Character, Is Largely A Matter Of Genetic Heritage. Choose Your Parents With Care.

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

The World Is What It Is, No Less And No More, And Therein Lies Its Entire And Sufficient Meaning.

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

In The Dog-eat-dog Economy, The Doberman Is Boss.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Passion, Sexual Passion, May Lead To Marriage, But Cannot Sustain Marriage. The Purpose Of Marriage Is The Raising Of Children, For Which Patience, Not Passion, Is The Necessary Foundation.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

A Crude Meal, No Doubt, But The Best Of All Sauces Is Hunger.

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

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.

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

Some Lives Are Tragic, Some Ridiculous. Most Are Both At Once.

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.

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

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.

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

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

A Man Could Be A Lover And Defender Of The Wilderness Without Ever In His Lifetime Leaving The Boundaries Of Asphalt, Powerlines, And Right-angled Surfaces. We Need Wilderness Whether Or Not We Ever Set Foot In It. We Need A Refuge Even Though We May Never Need To Set Foot In It. We Need The Possibility Of Escape As Surely As We Need Hope; Without It The Life Of The Cities Would Drive All Men Into Crime Or Drugs Or Psychoanalysis.

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.

Is The Archbishop's Blessing Any More Meaningful Than The Politician's Handshake? The Come, They Go, With Bigger Things Than Us On Their Minds.

When A Writer Has Done The Best That He Can Do, He Should Then Withdraw From The Book-writing Business And Take Up An Honest Trade Like Shoe Repair, Cattle Stealing, Or Screwworm Management.

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.

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

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

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

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

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

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

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

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

Humility Is A Virtue When You Have No Other.

Where All Think Alike There Is Little Danger Of Innovation.

Thought Provoking

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

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

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

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

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

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

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

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

Where All Pretend To Be Thinking Alike, It's Likely That No One Is Thinking At All.

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

If Industrial Man Continues To Multiply His Numbers And Expand His Operations He Will Succeed In His Apparent Intention, To Seal Himself Off From The Natural And Isolate Himself Within A Synthetic Prison Of His Own Making.

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

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

Beauty Is Only Skin Deep

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

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

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.

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

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!

All We Have, It Seems To Me, Is The Beauty Of Art And Nature And Life, And The Love Which That Beauty Inspires.

Nature And Life

Men Love Their Ideas More Than Their Lives. And The More Preposterous The Idea, The More Eager They Are To Die For It. And To Kill For It.

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.

Industrialism, Whether Of The Capitalist Or Socialist Coloration, Is The Basic Tyrant Of The Modern Age.

I Intend To Be Good For The Rest Of My Natural Life -- If I Live That Long.

In All Of Nature, There Is No Sound More Pleasing Than That Of A Hungry Animal At Its Feed. Unless You Are The Food.

The Moral Duty Of The Free Writer Is To Begin His Work At Home: To Be A Critic Of His Own Community, His Own Country, His Own Government, His Own Culture. The More Freedom The Writer Possesses, The Greater The Moral Obligation To Play The Role Of Critic.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The Proustian Aquarium: Grotesque And Gorgeous Fish Drifting With Languid Fins Through A Subaqueous Medium Of Pale Violet Polluted Ink.

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.

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

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

Writers Should Avoid The Academy. When A Writer Begins To Accept Pay For Talking About Words, We Know What He Will Produce Soon: Nothing But Words.

Tofu And Futons. The Adepts Of Orientalism Seem To Spend Most Of Their Lives Reclining. They Can't Quite Summon The Energy To Crawl Up Onto A Chair. Even Their Yogic Exercises Are Carried Out In A Prone Or Sitting Position.

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

A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

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

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.

Anyone Not Paranoid In This World Must Be Crazy. . . . Speaking Of Paranoia, It's True That I Do Not Know Exactly Who My Enemies Are. But That Of Course Is Exactly Why I'm Paranoid.

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.

Wilderness Is Not A Luxury But A Necessity Of The Human Spirit, And As Vital To Our Lives As Water And Good Bread. A Civilization Which Destroys What Little Remains Of The Wild, The Spare, The Original, Is Cutting Itself Off From Its Origins And Betraying The Principle Of Civilization Itself.

I Must Confess That I Know Nothing Whatsoever About True Underlying Reality, Never Having Met Any.

Taxation: How The Sheep Are Shorn.

Only A Fool Is Astonished By The Foolishness Of Mankind.

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

I Am Pleased Enough With The Surfaces - In Fact They Alone Seem To Me To Be Of Much Importance. Such Things For Example As The Grasp Of A Child's Hand In Your Own, The Flavor Of An Apple, The Embrace Of A Friend Or Lover, The Silk Of A Girl's Thigh, The Sunlight On The Rock And Leaves, The Feel Of Music, The Bark Of A Tree, The Abrasion Of Granite And Sand, The Plunge Of Clear Water Into A Pool, The Face Of The Wind - What Else Is There? What Else Do We Need?

A Man Without Passion Would Be Like A Body Without A Soul. Or Even More Grotesque, Like A Soul Without A Body.

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

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

Only The Half-mad Are Wholly Alive.

There Has Never Yet Been A Human Society Worthy Of The Name Of Civilization. Civilization Remains A Remote Ideal.

The Artist In Our Time Has Two Chief Responsibilities: (1) Art; And (2) Sedition.

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

One Of The Pleasant Things About Small Town Life Is That Everyone, Whether Rich Or Poor, Liked Or Disliked, Has Some Kind Of A Role And Place In The Community. I Never Felt That Living In A City - As I Once Did For A Couple Of Years.

The Sense Of Justice Springs From Self-respect; Both Are Coeval With Our Birth. Children Are Born With An Innate Sense Of Justice; It Usually Takes Twelve Years Of Public Schooling And Four More Years Of College To Beat It Out Of Them.

Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In The Soviet Union, He Was Condemned As Being Too Radical; In The West, For Being Too Conservative. He Could Please No One But The Musical Public. He Revenged Himself On Both By Writing A Short Piece Called 'march Of The Soviet Police.'

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

Life: Another Day, Another Dolor.

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

Every Important Change In Our Society, For The Good, At Least, Has Taken Place Because Of Popular Pressure-pressure From Below, From The Great Mass Of People.

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

Women Who Love Only Women May Have A Good Point.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Page, Arizona, Shithead Capital Of Coconino County: Any Town With Thirteen Churches And Only Four Bars Has Got An Incipient Social Problem. That Town Is Looking For Trouble.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Anarchism Is Democracy Taken Seriously.

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.'

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

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.

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

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

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.

The Only Thing Left Worth Saving Is Wilderness.

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.

Baseball Serves As A Good Model For Democracy In Action: Every Player Is Equally Important And Each Has A Chance To Be A Hero.

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

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

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

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.

How To Overthrow The System: Brew Your Own Beer; Kick In Your Tee Vee; Kill Your Own Beef; Build Your Own Cabin And Piss Off The Front Porch Whenever You Bloody Well Feel Like It.

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.

King Arthur And His Armored Goons Of The Round Table Functioned As The Politburo Of A Slave State: Camelot. Of All Who Have Written On The Matter Of Arthur, From Malory To White, Only Mark Twain Understood This. But Mark Twain Was A Great Writer.

Beware Of The Man Who Has No Enemies.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

All Forms Of Government Are Pernicious, Including Good Government.

How Strange And Wonderful Is Our Home, Our Earth, With Its Swirling Vaporous Atmosphere, Its Flowing And Frozen Liquids, Its Trembling Plants, Its Creeping, Crawling, Climbing Creatures, The Croaking Things With Wings That Hang On Rocks And Soar Through The Fog, The Furry Grass, The Scaly Seas.

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

‎"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

If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

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.

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

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