"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others."
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Quote collection
Edward Abbey quotes (page 3 of 33)
653 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Night and day the river flows. If time is the mind of space, the River is the soul of the desert. Brave boatmen come, they go, they die, the voyage flows on forever. We are all canyoneers. We are all passengers on this little mossy ship, this delicate dory sailing round the sun that humans call the earth. Joy, shipmates, joy."
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"If people persist in trespassing upon the grizzlies' territory, we must accept the fact that the grizzlies, from time to time, will harvest a few trespassers."
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"Let us hope our weapons are never needed - but do not forget what the common people of this nation knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny."
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"Defiance is beautiful. The defiance of power, especially great or overwhelming power, exalts and glorifies the rebel."
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"The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders."
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"It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it."
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"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."
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"I choose to listen to the river for a while, thinking river thoughts, before joining the night and the stars."
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"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."
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"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."
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"The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information."
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"A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear."
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"The purpose of love, sex, and marriage is the production and raising of children. But look about you: Most people have no business having children. They are unqualified, either genetically or culturally or both, to reproduce such sorry specimens as themselves. Of all our privileges, the license to breed is the one most grossly abused."
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"The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws."
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"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."
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"You can't study the darkness by flooding it with light."
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"In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United States, industry controls government. That is the principal structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our time."
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"I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree."
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"So I lived alone. The first thing I did was take off my pants. Naturally."
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