Irwin Edman Quotations

The standardized American is largely a myth created not least by Americans themselves.

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, and symbol rather than a reason by which men are moved.

Education is the process of casting false pearls before real swine

The contemporary hero, the mythical pattern in the imitation of whom we would live, remains as yet undefined. We have no hero; what is more to the point, we suspect hero worship.

By the year 1982 the graduated income tax will have practically abolished major differences in wealth.

Sophistication demands honesty; it does not require ill temper.

Many of our newly smart would rather be found murdering their children than being kind to their parents. They would prefer to be damned for rudeness than to be snickered at for courtesy.

The outlook for our country lies in the quality of its idleness.

The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its leisure.

God may still be in His Heaven, but there is more than sufficient evidence that all is not right with the world.

To the modern spirit, disillusioned, or at least unillusioned, the great evil to be avoided is sentimentality.

The discovery that the universe has no purpose need not prevent a human being from having one.

Life is always at some turning point.