Quotes By Carl Sandburg

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and with the world.

All politicians should have 3 hats - one to throw into the ring, one to talk through, and one to pull rabbits out of if elected.

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.

There was always the consolation that if I didn't like what I wrote I could throw it away or burn it.

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.

One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.

I am an idealist. I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way.

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.

We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.

We read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.

Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years.

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

Anger is the most impotent of passions. It effects nothing it goes about, and hurts the one who is possessed by it more than the one against whom it is directed.

We don't have to think up a title till we get the doggone book written.

The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect.

There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds.

I doubt if you can have a truly wild party without liquor.

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake.

There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.

Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.

I wrote poems in my corner of the Brooks Street station. I sent them to two editors who rejected them right off. I read those letters of rejection years later and I agreed with those editors.

I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.

You remember some bedrooms you have slept in. There are bedrooms you like to remember and others you would like to forget.

Shame is the feeling you have when you agree with the woman who loves you that you are the man she thinks you are.

The greatest cunning is to have none at all.