Our institutions are too big; they represent not the best but the worst characteristics of human beings. By submitting to huge hierarchies of power, we gain freedom from personal responsibility for what we do and are forced to do - the seduction of it - but we lose the dignity of being real men and women. Power corrupts; attracts the worst and corrupts the best.. Refuse to participate in evil; insist on taking part in what is healthy, generous, and responsible. Stand up, speak out, and when necessary fight back. Get down off the fence and lend a hand, grab a-hold, be a citizen - not a subject. Edward Abbey
About This Quote

The quote above is about the power of leading by example. One should be willing to take a stand and play an active role in the political process. This quote is saying you should not sit back and let others do all the work, you should get involved and make your voice heard.

Source: Postcards From Ed: Dispatches And Salvos From An American Iconoclast

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The soul is healed by being with children. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  2. Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue). - Jess C. Scott
  3. Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public. - Cornel West
  4. I suppose it’s not a social norm, and not a manly thing to do – to feel, discuss feelings. So that’s what I’m giving the finger to. Social norms and stuff…what good are social norms, really? I think all they do is project a limited... - Jess C. Scott
  5. Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with other people. - Albert Camus
More Quotes By Edward Abbey
  1. A man could be a lover and defender of the wilderness without ever in his lifetime leaving the boundaries of asphalt, powerlines, and right-angled surfaces. We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may...
  2. Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.
  3. This sweet virginal primitive land will metaphorically breathe a sigh of relief --like a whisper of wind--when we are all and finally gone and the place and its creations can return to their ancient procedures unobserved and undisturbed by the busy, anxious, brooding consciousness of...
  4. Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
  5. But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.
Related Topics