Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey
Edward Paul Abbeywas an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActivist
Date of Birth29 January 1927
CountryUnited States of America
play common-sense healthy
One can imagine a sane, healthy, cheerful human society based on no more than the principles of common sense, as validated each day by work, play, and living experience. But this remains the most utopian and fantastic of ideals.
play tyrants thrones
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?
baseball hero player
Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.
football player games
Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are -- retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.
self hatred self-hatred
One thing worse than self-hatred is chiggers.
church equal faculty good less social state sum university worthy
In social institutions, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts. There will never be a state as good as its people, or a church worthy of its congregation, or a university equal to its faculty and students.
culture infancy knowing man manhood modern possible proceed senility
In the modern techno-industrial culture, it is possible to proceed from infancy into senility without ever knowing manhood
advocate arch delicate glue lady park perhaps service sort spray
There have been some, even in the Park Service, who advocate spraying Delicate Arch with a fixative of some sort - Elmer's glue perhaps or Lady Clairol Spray Net.
elegant feed foul killer kindred predator sly soaring trembling worms
We are kindred all of us, ... killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us.
war officers
War? The one war I'd be happy to join is the war against officers.
believe kissing embrace
I believe in nothing that I cannot touch, kiss, embrace.... The rest is only hearsay.
believe listening lasts
The best argument for Christianity is the Gregorian chant. Listening to that music, one can believe anything -- while the music lasts.
nutcrackers reincarnation
Reincarnation? There is such a thing. What could be more Mozartian than the Nutcracker Suite?
distance kids work-out
Simplicity is always a virtue. One kid on a riverbank working out a Stephen Foster tune on his new harmonica heard from the correct esthetic distance projects more magic and power than the entire Vienna Philharmonic and Chorus laboring (once again) through the Mozart Requiem or Bach's B Minor Mass.