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We Need Wilderness Because We Are Wild Animals. Everyone Needs A Place Where He Can Go To Go Crazy In Peace. For The Terror, Freedom, And Delirium. Because We Need Brutality And Raw Adventure, Because Men And Women First Learned To Love In, Under, And All Around Trees, Because We Need For Every Pair Of Feet And Legs About Ten Leagues Of Naked Nature, Crags To Leap From, Mountains To Measure By, Deserts To Finally Die In When The Heart Fails.

-Edward Abbey

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We Need Wilderness Because

Edward Abbey

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We Need Wilderness Because We Are Wild Animals. Everyone Needs A Place Where He Can Go To Go Crazy In Peace. For The Terror, Freedom, And Delirium. Because We Need Brutality And Raw Adventure, Because Men And Women First Learned To Love In, Under, And All Around Trees, Because We Need For Every Pair Of Feet And Legs About Ten Leagues Of Naked Nature, Crags To Leap From, Mountains To Measure By, Deserts To Finally Die In When The Heart Fails.

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

Great Art Is Indefinable But That's All Right; It Exists Anyway.

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

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.

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.

Without Courage, All Other Virtues Are Useless.

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

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

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.

Be A Half-assed Crusader, A Part-time Fanatic. Don't Worry To Much About The Fate Of The World. Saving The World Is Only A Hobby. Get Out There And Enjoy The World, Your Girlfriend, Your Boyfriend, Husbands Wives; Climb Mountains, Run Rivers, Get Drunk, Do Whatever You Want To Do While You Can, Before It's Too Late.

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

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

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

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

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

Jane Austen: Getting Into Her Books Is Like Getting In Bed With A Cadaver. Something Vital Is Lacking; Namely, Life.

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

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

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

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.

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

The Response To My Books From My East Coast Friends Has Been Wildly Various, Running The Gamut From 'bad' To 'very Bad.' (is There Another Gamut?)

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

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

Proust Again: One Can Only Wish That A Man With Such Powers Of Total Recall Had Led A Less Tedious Life, Moved Among Somewhat Livelier Circles.

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.

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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.

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.

Beware Of Your Wishes: They Will Probably Come True.

Better A Cruel Truth Than A Comfortable Delusion.

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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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

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

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No Man Likes To Be Smoked Out Of His Hole In February.

Platitude: A Statement That Denies By Implication What It Explicitly Affirms.

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?

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.

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

An Empty Man Is Full Of Himself.

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

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Nature Is Indifferent To Our Love, But Never Unfaithful.

If Wilderness Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Can Save Wilderness.

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

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

Books Are Like Eggs -- Best When Fresh.

I Despise My Own Nation Most. Because I Know It Best. Because I Still Love It, Suffering From Hope. For Me, That's Patrotism.

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

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

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Music Clouds The Intellect But Clarifies The Heart.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

Jack Kerouac, Like A Sick Refrigerator, Worked Too Hard At Keeping Cool And Died On His Mama's Lap From Alcohol And Infantilism.

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

All Forms Of Government Are Pernicious, Including Good Government.

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

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.

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England Has Never Enjoyed A Genuine Social Revolution. Maybe That's What's Wrong With That Dear, Tepid, Vapid, Insipid, Stuffy, Little Country.

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

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

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

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.

The Author: An Imaginary Person Who Writes Real Books.

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Our Contemporary Tories Prefer The Term 'ordered Liberty' To 'freedom'. The Word 'freedom' Scares Them; It Has Too Much Of A Paleolithic Ring To It.

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

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

The Rich Are Not Very Nice. That's Why They're Rich.

Women: We Cannot Love Them All. But We Must Try.

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

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A House Built On Greed Cannot Long Endure.

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

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