Edward Abbey - Society Quotes

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We live in a society in which it is normal to be sick; and sick to be abnormal.

Edward Abbey
Edmund Wilson was our greatest American literary critic because he was more than a literary critic: He was a fearless, even radical judge of the society he lived in. (See, for example, _A Piece of My Mind_; _The Cold War and the Income Tax_; the introduction to _Patriotic Gore_.) Our conventional critics cannot forgive him for those scandalous lapses in good taste.

Edward Abbey
A crowded society is a restrictive society; an overcrowded society becomes an authoritarian, repressive and murderous society.

Edward Abbey
The more corrupt a society, the more numerous its laws.

Edward Abbey
One can imagine a sane, healthy, cheerful human society based on no more than the principles of common sense, as validated each day by work, play, and living experience. But this remains the most utopian and fantastic of ideals.

Edward Abbey
The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.

Edward Abbey
The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward.

Edward Abbey
Any hack can safely rail away at foreign powers beyond the sea; but a good writer is a critic of the society he lives in.

Edward Abbey
Nothing can excel a few days in jail for giving a young man or woman a quick education in the basis of industrial society.

Edward Abbey
There has never yet been a human society worthy of the name of civilization. Civilization remains a remote ideal.

Edward Abbey