"I was once invited to take part in a heroic, possibly fatal enterprise, but I declined, mainly on account of sloth."
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Quote collection
Edward Abbey quotes (page 25 of 33)
653 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I intend to be good for the rest of my natural life -- if I live that long."
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"The best people, like the best wines, come from the hills."
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"Some lives are tragic, some ridiculous. Most are both at once."
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"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."
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"My Aunt Ida at age eighty-three: 'Yeah,' she said, 'I'll be dead pretty soon. And frankly, I don't give a damn.'"
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"The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all."
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"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."
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"There is a wine called Easy Days and Mellow Nights, well-known on the outskirts of the Navajo reservation. It is an economical wine, fortified with the best of intentions, and I recommend it to every serious wino."
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"We judge individual man and women as we do nations and races -- by the character of their achievement and by their achievement of character."
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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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"Terrorism: deadly violence against humans and other living things, usually conducted by government against its own people."
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"Most academic economists know nothing of economy. In fact, they know little of anything."
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"The feminists have a legitimate grievance. But so does everyone else."
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"Every man should be his own guru; every woman her own gurette."
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"I am hopeful, though not full of hope, and the only reason I don't believe in happy endings is because I don't believe in endings."
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"Girls, like flowers, bloom but once. But once is enough."
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"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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"To be everywhere at once is to be nowhere forever, if you ask me."
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"Do I believe in ghosts? I believe in the ghosts that haunt the human mind."
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