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Wealth And How To Achieve It: Let Us Define The Wealthy Man As He Who Has Everything He Desires. How To Reach That Happy Condition? Two Ways

-Edward Abbey

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Wealth And How To

Edward Abbey

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Wealth And How To Achieve It: Let Us Define The Wealthy Man As He Who Has Everything He Desires. How To Reach That Happy Condition? Two Ways

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

All Forms Of Government Are Pernicious, Including Good Government.

In America, As Elsewhere, The General Irritability Level Keeps Rising.

One Word Is Worth A Thousand Pictures. If It's The Right Word.

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

All Living Things On Earth Are Kindred.

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

A Cowboy Is A Farm Boy In Leather Britches And A Comical Hat.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

The Earth Is Not A Mechanism But An Organism, A Being With Its Own Life And Its Own Reasons, Where The Support And Sustenance Of The Human Animal Is Incidental. If Man In His Newfound Power And Vanity Persists In The Attempt To Remake The Planet In His Own Image, He Will Succeed Only In Destroying Himself - Not The Planet. The Earth Will Survive Our Most Ingenious Folly.

There Is Beauty, Heartbreaking Beauty, Everywhere.

Beauty Everywhere

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

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.

Orthodoxy Is A Relaxation Of The Mind Accompanied By A Stiffening Of The Heart.

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

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

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

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

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

Congress Is Always Willing To Appropriate Money For More And Bigger Paved Roads, Anywhere -- Particularly If They Form Loops.

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

I Know My Own Nation Best. That's Why I Despise It The Most. And Know And Love My Own People, Too, The Swine. I'm A Patriot. A Dangerous Man.

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

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

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.

Only A Fool Is Astonished By The Foolishness Of Mankind.

You Cannot Reshape Human Nature Without Mutilating Human Beings.

Why This Cult Of Wilderness?... Because We Like The Taste Of Freedom; Because We Like The Smell Of Danger.

How Can I Be So Evil? It Ain't Easy.

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.

We Know So Very Little About This Strange Planet We Live On, This Haunted World Where All Answers Lead Only To More Mystery.

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

The Tragic Sense Of Life: Our Heroic Acceptance Of The Suffering Of Others.

Suffering Of Others

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

In The End, For All Our Differences And Conflicts, Most Women And Men Share The Same Food, Work, Shelter, Bed, Life, Joy, Anguish, And Fate. We Need Each Other.

I Would Give Ten Years Off The Beginning Of My Life To See, Only Once, Tyrannosaurus Rex Come Rearing Up From The Elms Of Central Park, A Morgan Police Horse Screaming In Its Jaws. We Can Never Have Enough Of Nature.

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.

Heaven Is Home. Utopia Is Here. Nirvana Is Now.

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.

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

Humankind Will Not Be Free Until The Last Kremlin Commissar Is Strangled With The Entrails Of The Last Pentagon Chief Of Staff.

For Myself I Hold No Preferences Among Flowers, So Long As They Are Wild, Free, Spontaneous. Bricks To All Greenhouses! Black Thumb And Cutworm To The Potted Plant!

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.

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?

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

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

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.

My Loyalties Will Not Be Bound By National Borders, Or Confined In Time By One Nation's History, Or Limited In The Spiritual Dimension By One Language And Culture. I Pledge My Allegiance To The Damned Human Race, And My Everlasting Love To The Green Hills Of Earth, And My Intimations Of Glory To The Singing Stars, To The Very End Of Space And Time.

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

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

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

Life: Another Day, Another Dolor.

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

Life Is Too Tragic For Sadness: Let Us Rejoice.

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

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

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

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.

Life Is Unfair. And It's Not Fair That Life Is Unfair.

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

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.

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

It Is Not An Easy Thing To Inflate A Dog.

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

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.

In Social Affairs, I'm An Optimist. I Really Do Believe That Our Military- Industrial Civilization Will Soon Collapse.

A Giant Thirst Is A Great Joy When Quenched In Time.

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 Dog's Life Is A Good Life, For A Dog.

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

If You Feel That You're Not Ready To Die, Never Fear; Nature Will Give You Complete And Adequate Assistance When The Time Comes.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

How Could Anything Non-controversial Be Of Intellectual Interest To Grown-ups?

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.

Walking Takes Longer... 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.

Native American

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

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.

Quantum Mechanics Provides Us With An Approximate, Plausible, Conjectural Explanation Of What Actually Is, Or Was, Or May Be Taking Place Inside A Cyclotron During A Dark Night In February.

Why Do I Write? I Write To Entertain My Friends And To Exasperate Our Enemies. To Unfold The Folded Lie, To Record To Truth Of Our Time, And, Of Course, To Promote Esthetic Bliss.

The Critics Say That Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony Has No Form. They Are Wrong; It Has The Form Of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony.

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

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

We Are Slaves In The Sense That We Depend For Our Daily Survival Upon An Expand-or-expire Agro-industrial Empire—a Crackpot Machine—that The Specialists Cannot Comprehend And The Managers Cannot Manage. Which Is, Furthermore, Devouring World Resources At An Exponential Rate. We Are, Most Of Us, Dependent Employees. …edward Abbey (1927-1989)

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

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

The Most Striking Thing About The Rich Is The Gracious Democracy Of Their Manners -- And The Crude Vulgarity Of Their Way Of Life.

In A Nation Of Sheep, One Brave Man Forms A Majority.

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

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!

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

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

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

If You Feel That You Must Suffer, Then Plan Your Suffering Carefully -- As You Choose Your Dreams, As You Conceive Your Ancestors.

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

I Am Delighted, One More Time, By The Daring Of My Species And The Audacity Of Our Flying Machines. There Is Poetry And Music In Our Technology, A Beauty As Touching As That Of Eagle, Moss Campion, Raven Or Yonder Limestone Boulder Shining Under The Arctic Sun.

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.

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

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

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

I'd Sooner Exchange Ideas With The Birds On Earth Than Learn To Carry On Intergalactic Communications With Some Obscure Race Of Humanoids On A Satellite Planet From The World Of Betelgeuse.

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

If A Man’s Imagination Were Not So Weak, So Easily Tired, If His Capacity For Wonder Not So Limited, He Would Abandon Forever Such Fantasies Of The Supernal. He Would Learn To Perceive In Water, Leaves And Silence More Than Sufficient Of The Absolute And Marvelous, More Than Enough To Console Him For The Loss Of The Ancient Dream.

It Is Not Enough To Understand The Natural World; The Point Is To Defend And Preserve It.

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.

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.

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

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

One Must Be Reasonable In One's Demands On Life. For Myself, All That I Ask Is: (1) Accurate Information; (2) Coherent Knowledge; (3) Deep Understanding; (4) Infinite Loving Wisdom; (5) No More Kidney Stones, Please.

Deep Understanding

There Are No Vacant Lots In Nature.

Belief In The Supernatural Reflects A Failure Of The Imagination.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Come With Me, The River Said, Close Your Eyes And Quiet Your Limbs And Float With Me Into The Wonder And Mystery Of The Canyons, See The Unknown And The Little Known, Look Upon The Stone Gods Face To Face, See Medusa, Drink My Waters, Hear My Song, Feel My Power, Come Along And Drift With Me Toward The Distant, Ultimate And Legendary Sea.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

There Is Science, Logic, Reason; There Is Thought Verified By Experience. And Then There Is California.

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

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

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

We Live In A Time Of Twin Credulities: The Hunger For The Miraculous Combined With A Servile Awe Of Science. The Mating Of The Two Gives Us Superstition Plus Scientism -- A Mongoloid Metaphysic.

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

One Thing More Dangerous Than Getting Between A Grizzly Sow And Her Cub Is Getting Between A Businessman And A Dollar Bill.

Appearance Versus Reality? Appearance Is Reality, God Damn It!

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 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.

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

Late In August The Lure Of The Mountains Becomes Irresistible. Seared By The Everlasting Sunfire, I Want To See Running Water Again, Embrace A Pine Tree, Cut My Initials In The Bark Of An Aspen, Get Bit By A Mosquito, See A Mountain Bluebird, Find A Big Blue Columbine, Get Lost In The Firs, Hike Above Timberline, Sunbathe On Snow And Eat Some Ice, Climb The Rocks And Stand In The Wind At The Top Of The World On The Peak Of Tukuhnikivats.

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.

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.

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.

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

We Know This Apodictic Rock Beneath Our Feet. That Dogmatic Sun Above Our Heads. The World Of Dreams, The Agony Of Love And The Foresight Of Death. That Is All We Know. And All We Need To Know? Challenge That Statement.

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

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

How Did Haydn And Mozart Produce Such Vast Quantities Of Formally Perfect Art? They Worked From A Perfect Formula. In Music, Beethoven Was The Great Emancipator.

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.

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

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

It Is True That Some Of My Fiction Was Based On Actual Events. But The Events Took Place After The Fiction Was Written.

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.

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.

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

My Books Always Make The Best-seller Lists In Wolf Hole, Arizona, And Hanksville, Utah.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I've Never Yet Read A Review Of One Of My Own Books That I Couldn't Have Written Much Better Myself.

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

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?

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.

I Stand For What I Stand On.

America My Country: Last Nation On Earth To Abolish Human Slavery; First Of All Nations To Drop The Nuclear Bomb On Our Fellow Human Beings.

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

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

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