“If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose.”

—  Edward Abbey

Source: Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If it's knowledge and wisdom you want, then seek out the company of those who do real work for an honest purpose." by Edward Abbey?
Edward Abbey photo
Edward Abbey 146
American author and essayist 1927–1989

Related quotes

Joe Haldeman photo

“Big money seeks out the company of its own, for purposes of reproduction.”

Joe Haldeman (1943) American science fiction writer

Source: For White Hill (1995), p. 225

Sophie Scholl photo

“The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O<sub>2</sub> : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in <i> The White Rose </i> (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

Václav Havel photo

“Keep the company of those who seek the truth- run from those who have found it”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic
İsmail Enver photo

“All who seek to enrich those who do not work should be destroyed.”

İsmail Enver (1881–1922) Turkish military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution

Quoted in "Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination" - Page 405 - by Ben Kiernan - Social Science - 2007.

“If history is the working out of a more moral purpose in time, then those who lay claim to that purpose are by that fact the predilect agents of history.”

Eric Wolf (1923–1999) American anthropologist

Source: Europe and the People Without History, 1982, Chapter 1, Introduction, p. 5.

John Gray photo
Nicholas Sparks photo

“Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.”

Source: A Walk to Remember

Dolly Parton photo

“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”

Dolly Parton (1946) American singer-songwriter and actress
Masaaki Imai photo
Kenan Malik photo

“The real value of free speech, in other words, is not to those who possess power, but to those who want to challenge them. And the real value of censorship is to those who do not wish their authority to be challenged.”

Kenan Malik (1960) English writer, lecturer and broadcaster

Free speech in an age of identity politics (2015)
Context: To accept that certain things cannot be said is to accept that certain forms of power cannot be challenged.... This is why free speech is essential not simply to the practice of democracy, but to the aspirations of those groups who may have been failed by the formal democratic processes; to those whose voices may have been silenced by racism, for instance. The real value of free speech, in other words, is not to those who possess power, but to those who want to challenge them. And the real value of censorship is to those who do not wish their authority to be challenged. The right to ‘subject each others’ fundamental beliefs to criticism’ is the bedrock of an open, diverse society. Once we give up such a right in the name of ‘tolerance’ or ‘respect’, we constrain our ability to challenge those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice.

Related topics