"Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion"

[WileEcoyote]

Quotes from the Late Edward Abbey:

* On industry: "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."<3>

* On off-road vehicles: "The fat pink slobs who go roaring over the landscape in these over-sized over-priced over-advertised mechanical mastodons are people too lazy to walk, too ignorant to saddle a horse, too cheap and clumsy to paddle a canoe. Like cattle or sheep, they travel in herds, scared to death of going anywhere alone, and they leave their sign and spoor all over the back country: Coors beer cans, Styrofoam cups, plastic spoons, balls of Kleenex, wads of toilet paper, spent cartridge shells, crushed gopher snakes, smashed sagebrush, broken trees, dead chipmunks, wounded deer, eroded trails, bullet-riddled petroglyphs, spray-painted signatures, vandalized Indian ruins, fouled-up waterholes, polluted springs and smoldering campfires piled with incombustible tinfoil, filter tips, broken bottles. Etc." (Postcards from Ed, pp. 66-67).

* On sport hunting: "Whenever I see a photograph of some sportsman grinning over his kill, I am always impressed by the striking moral and aesthetic superiority of the dead animal to the live one."<6>

* On reason: "Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried."<7>

* On truth: "Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion."<8>

* On the Bible: "A knowledge of the true age of the earth and of the fossil record makes it impossible for any balanced intellect to believe in the literal truth of every part of the Bible in the way that fundamentalists do. And if some of the Bible is manifestly wrong, why should any of the rest of it be accepted automatically?"


* On Anarchism: "Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners."<4>

* On terrorism: "The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws."<5>

* On the wisdom of crowds: One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain't nothin' can beat teamwork." (Seldom Seen Smith, in The Monkey Wrench Gang)

[PDJane]

1. Thank you..........

Those are great.

[PatSeg]

2. Great quotes - thanks

[Warpy]

3. “Grown men do not need leaders.”

That is my favorite.