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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
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Age: 101 †
Born: 1919
Born: March 24
Died: 2021
Died: February 22
Activist Shareholder
Journalist
Military Officer
Painter
Peace Activist
Playwright
Poet
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Writer
Yonkers
New York State
Feilingedi
Lawrence Ferling
L. Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti
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Republic
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Gadflies
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Various
Soapbox
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Subversive
Poet
Relish
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Plato
More quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors everything depends on the money.
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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
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
I'd ban all automobiles from the central part of the city. You see, the automobile was just a passing fad. It's got to go. It's got to go a long way from here.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
If you're too open-minded your brains will fall out.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
There is an ecstatic mechanism in birds that makes them fly upwards in spite of worms.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
We were just a one-room bookstore we didn't have any money for lawyers.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Make your mind learn its way around the heart.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalytpic times, even if this means sounding apocaltypic.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country
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
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
