Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Age: 101 †
Born: 1919
Born: March 24
Died: 2021
Died: February 22
Activist Shareholder
Journalist
Military Officer
Painter
Peace Activist
Playwright
Poet
Publisher
Translator
Writer
Yonkers
New York State
Feilingedi
Lawrence Ferling
L. Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti
Kind
Various
Soapbox
Role
Subversive
Poet
Relish
Danger
Plato
Roles
Promote
Present
Poets
Use
Republic
Ideas
Considered
Gadflies
More quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say 'whom I am constantly shocking
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
We have to raise the consciousness the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
They were looking for a stable, but we didn't have one. In fact, we weren't very stable ourselves.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
As I get older I perceive Life has its tail in its mouth.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry can change the world, just like any art can change the world, by changing consciousness. Of course this was the great slogan of the nineteen sixites hippies’ revolution—enlarge the area of consciousness, which quite often was done by psychedelic means.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors everything depends on the money.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
T.S. Eliot's influence was enormous on my generation. Much more than Ezra Pound. I actually had to put T.S. Eliot books out of the house because my poetry was so influenced. Everything I wrote sounded like Eliot.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist - if you say you are, you probably aren't.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
If you're too open-minded your brains will fall out.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Today America's on the wrong side of the world revolution. What I mean by that is, the world revolution is the people's revolution, the liberation movements in all the third world countries, which when everyone tries to get started the U.S. stops.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
For even bad poetry has relevance for what it does not say for what it leaves out.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
We were just a one-room bookstore we didn't have any money for lawyers.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poets, come out of your closets, Open your windows, open your doors, You have been holed up too long in your closed worlds... Poetry should transport the public/to higher places/than other wheels can carry it.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace' One grand boulevard with trees with one grand cafe in sun with strong black coffee in very small cups. One not necessarily very beautiful man or woman who loves you. One fine day.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalytpic times, even if this means sounding apocaltypic.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
