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Poets... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts.

Archibald MacLeish

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Archibald MacLeish
Age: 89 †
Born: 1892
Born: May 7
Died: 1982
Died: April 20
Lawyer
Librarian
Playwright
Poet
Poet Lawyer
University Teacher
Writer
Glencoe
Illinois
Men
Literal
Minded
Hurts
Poets
Till
Poet
Hurt
Word
Squeeze

More quotes by Archibald MacLeish

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Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.
Archibald MacLeish
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There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.
Archibald MacLeish
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Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.
Archibald MacLeish
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Writers . . . write to give reality to experience.
Archibald MacLeish
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America is promises to take! America is promises to us to take them.
Archibald MacLeish
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The infantile cowardice of our time which demands an external pattern, a nonhuman authority.
Archibald MacLeish
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The task of man is not to discover new worlds, but to discover his own world in terms of human comprehension and beauty.
Archibald MacLeish
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A poem should not mean but be.
Archibald MacLeish
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Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England.
Archibald MacLeish
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A Poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit.
Archibald MacLeish
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That peculiar disease of intellectuals, that infatuation with ideas at the expense of experience, that compels experience to conform to bookish expectations.
Archibald MacLeish
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The American journey has not ended. America is always still to build ... West is a country in the mind, and so eternal.
Archibald MacLeish
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Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only, that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.
Archibald MacLeish
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The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
Archibald MacLeish
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It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.
Archibald MacLeish
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Love becomes the ultimate answer to the ultimate human question.
Archibald MacLeish
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Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.
Archibald MacLeish
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The map of America is a map of endlessness, of opening out, of forever and ever. No man's face would make you think of it but his hope might, his courage might.
Archibald MacLeish
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A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds.
Archibald MacLeish
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How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms, by truth when it is attacked by lies, by faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always, in the final act, by determination and faith.
Archibald MacLeish