918 Quotes by Edward Abbey
- Author Edward Abbey
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In any nation but the USA, it is taken for granted that a man of distinction, ability, wealth or power will keep a mistress and a few girlfriends on the side. Only in America, still suffering from its grotesque, hypocritical Puritan heritage, do we persist in attempting to deny and repeal a million years of basic primate biology.
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- Author Edward Abbey
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But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.
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- Author Edward Abbey
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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.
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- Author Edward Abbey
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Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second.
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- Author Edward Abbey
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To make the distinction unmistakably clear: Civilization is the vital force in human history; culture is that inert mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend to drag down the advance of life; Civilization is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; culture is the Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to the stake in the Campo di Fiori...
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- Author Edward Abbey
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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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- Author Edward Abbey
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There was this tendency to drift. And yet when she thought about it, what did she really want to do? Or be? She had given up dancing-the dance-because it was too demanding, because it required an almost total devotion which she was unwilling to give. The cruelest art.
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- Author Edward Abbey
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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.
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- Author Edward Abbey
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Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
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