01c. 1958 ADPeople who think that love, sex, marriage, work, play, life and death are serious matters are urged NOT to read this book. Buy it, yes, but don't read it. [Regarding "The Fool's Progress"]Edward Abbey / quote ↗
02c. 1958 ADInstant communication is not communication at all but merely a frantic, trivial, nerve-wracking bombardment of cliches, threats, fads, fashions, gibberish and advertising.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
03c. 1958 ADIt's a great country: you can say whatever you like so long as it is strictly true--nobody will ever take you seriously.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
04c. 1958 ADSo I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
05c. 1958 ADI hate and fear violence myself, have always avoided barroom brawls, and tho' I'm a bit of a gun-nut, and a member of the NRA, I never shoot at anything but beer cans and mule deer. (In season.) And seldom hit either, except by accident.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
06c. 1958 ADTo 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.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
07c. 1958 ADAnd if the computer gives you any back talk, pour some well-sugared office coffee into its evil little silicon brain.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
08c. 1958 ADAnarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
09c. 1958 ADThey cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
10c. 1958 ADMost every charge you level at American capitalism applies with equal force to communism, with this nice difference, that the Reds make no pretense at such frivolities as civil liberties or environmentalism. The differences in degree are so great that they result in a radical difference in kind.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
12c. 1958 ADThe children are innocent until proven guilty. For their sake, not ours, we must soldier on, muddling our way toward frugality, simplicity, liberty, community, until some kind of sane and rational balance is achieved between our ability to love and our cockeyed ambition to conquer and dominate everything in sight. No wonder the galaxies recede from us in every direction, fleeing at velocities that approach the speed of light. They are frightened. We humans are the Terror of the Universe.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
13c. 1958 ADBut of the seven deadly sins, wrath is the healthiest - next only to lust.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
14c. 1958 ADOne 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.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
16c. 1958 ADWe 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.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
17c. 1958 ADMy 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.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
19c. 1958 ADThere is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
20c. 1958 ADA patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
23c. 1958 ADYes, 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.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
24c. 1958 ADLet's have some precision in language here: terrorism means deadly violence -- for a political and/or economical purpose -- carried out against people and other living things, and is usually conducted by governments against their own citizens (as at Kent State, or in Vietnam, or in Poland, or in most of Latin America right now), or by corporate entities such as J. Paul Getty, Exxon, Mobil Oil, etc etc., against the land and all creatures that depend upon the land for life and livelihood. A bulldozer ripping up a hillside to strip mine for coal is committing terrorism; the damnation of a flowing river followed by the drowning of Cherokee graves, of forest and farmland, is an act of terrorism.Sabotage, on the other hand, means the use of force against inanimate property, such as machinery, which is being used (e.g.) to deprive human beings of their rightful work (as in the case of Ned Ludd and his mates); sabotage (le sabot dropped in a spinning jenny) -- for whatever purpose -- has never meant and has never implied the use of violence against living creatures.Edward Abbey / quote ↗
