"I think it’s one of the major responsibilities of the poet. As poets we tend to not like the word “responsibility”. We prefer “freedom”, we want to be as free as we can, but freedom and responsibility can go together. We’re responsible because we’re writers, and we’ve been at this all our lives…"

Juan Felipe Herrera Literature See all quotes by Juan Felipe Herrera →

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“They are standing up and they're crying…and their emotion is coming from all the emotion we're experiencing collectively.”

“Poetry, with the breath of the poet, the heart of her life, joined by millions, pushes forth with the creative forces bestowed upon us. A wall is a plaything before the positive. It will take time. Change comes — rumbling with letters and caesuras, chants, odd-angled rhymes and earthy people power.”

“I believe in beautiful messes…I like to splatter a lot.”

“Beauty, suffering, power and culture are all related. We cannot tear away from reality. It is better to live with all things, then to cut ourselves off and fester in a segmented mind.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans…"

— Lyndon B. Johnson

Politics1908–1973

#justice

"This is the demise of the Republican Party. This is an opportunity, I think, for the Libertarian Party to become a major party."

— Gary Johnson

Politics1953

#art

"The approach to the study of economic history that dominates the presentation of the subject in this volume is that of the economist whose immediate and primary function is to study the production and…"

— Chester W. Wright

Economics1879–1966

#knowledge

"I used to think that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel that it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third place, and teaching the fourth."

— James O. Fraser

1886–1938

#truth