Frasi di Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey
Data di nascita: 29. Gennaio 1927
Data di morte: 14. Marzo 1989
Edward Paul Abbey è stato uno scrittore statunitense, noto per il suo interesse per l'ambiente e l'ecologia.
Tra i suoi scritti più famosi si può citare I sabotatori che divenne il testo ispiratore di molti movimenti ambientalisti e dei cosiddetti ecoterroristi, lo stesso titolo venne usato come neologismo per definire l'azione di sabotaggio contro le cosiddette corporation a salvaguardia dell'ambiente e degli spazi incontaminati.
Frasi Edward Abbey
„Il rancher (con un paio di onorevoli eccezioni) è un uomo che circonda i pascoli di filo spinato; scava pozzi e demolisce i laghetti destinati al bestiame; costringe alla fuga alci, antilopi e bighorn; avvelena i coyote e i cani della prateria; spara a vista ad aquile, orsi e puma; trasforma le praterie vergini in distese di coyote e i cani della prateria; spara a vista ad aquile, orsi e puma; trasforma le praterie vergini in distese di amaranto, serpentaria, monolopia, merda di mucca, formicai, fango, polvere e mosche. E poi, ciondolando davanti alle telecamere, racconta sorridendo del suo grande amore per il West.“
Origine: Da The Cowboy and His Cow, discorso tenuto a Missoula nell'aprile 1985; citato in Peter Singer e Jim Mason, Come mangiamo: le conseguenze etiche delle nostre scelte alimentari, traduzione di Francesca Tondi, il Saggiatore, Milano, 2011, [//books.google.it/books?id=2wafUFd2KQQC&pg=PA272 p. 272]. ISBN 978-88-565-0241-1
„Equilibrio, questo è il segreto. Moderato estremismo.“
Origine: Da Bedrock and Paradox.
„Dottrine fantastiche (come il cristianesimo, l'islamismo o il marxismo) richiedono la fede unanime. Ma se qualcuno lancia dei dubbi sul credo di milioni, ecco che compaiono paura e odio, camere a gas e di tortura, la forca, i lavori forzati e i reparti di psichiatria.“
Origine: Da A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal, St. Martin's Press, 1989.
„A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.“
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)
„Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others.“
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)
„Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.“
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)
„Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started.“
“Walking” p. 205
The Journey Home (1977)
Contesto: The longest journey begins with a single step, not with the turn of an ignition key. That’s the best thing about walking, the journey itself. It doesn’t much matter whether you get where you’re going or not. You’ll get there anyway. Every good hike brings you eventually back home. Right where you started.
„It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here.“
Quoted in Saving Nature's Legacy : Protecting and Restoring Biodiversity (1994) by Reed F. Noss, Allen Y. Cooperrider, and Rodger Schlickeisen, p. 338
Contesto: One final paragraph of advice: do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am — a reluctant enthusiast... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards.
„The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy.“
Abbey's Road (1979)
Contesto: The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer." Egalite implies liberte. And always will. 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.
„This is the most beautiful place on earth.
There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary.“
— Edward Abbey, libro Desert Solitaire
"The First Morning", p. 1
Desert Solitaire (1968)
Contesto: This is the most beautiful place on earth.
There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio, or Rome — there's no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment.
„His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.“
p. 121
The Journey Home (1977)
Contesto: As for the "solitary confinement of the mind," my theory is that solipsism, like other absurdities of the professional philosopher, is a product of too much time wasted in library stacks between the covers of a book, in smoke-filled coffeehouses (bad for brains) and conversation-clogged seminars. To refute the solipsist or the metaphysical idealist all that you have to do is take him out and throw a rock at his head: if he ducks he's a liar. His logic may be airtight but his argument, far from revealing the delusions of living experience, only exposes the limitations of logic.
„The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.“
“Shadows from the Big Woods”, p. 225
The Journey Home (1977)
Contesto: The earth is not a mechanism but an organism, a being with its own life and its own reasons, where the support and sustenance of the human animal is incidental. If man in his newfound power and vanity persists in the attempt to remake the planet in his own image, he will succeed only in destroying himself — not the planet. The earth will survive our most ingenious folly.
