Lawrence Ferlinghetti Quotes

Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,and whose shepherds mislead them.Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.Pity the nation that raises not its voice,except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as heroand aims to rule the world with force and by torture.Pity the nation that knows no other language but its ownand no other culture but its own.Pity the nation whose breath is moneyand sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erodeand their freedoms to be washed away.My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country

Decide if a poem is a question or a declaration, a meditation or an outcry.

I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.

[in the true mad north] of introspection,where 'falcons of the inner eye'dive and die, glimpsing in their dying fall, all life's memory of existence.

If you're too open-minded your brains will fall out.

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.