Quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I think if there's a great depression there might be some hope.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Hope

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Freedom

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Life

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

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Hope

We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

And the Blue Angels are coming back to scare the local population. I remember seeing old Vietnamese women ducking under the benches in Washington Square; they thought they were back in the war.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Success

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

Wisdom

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

Life

Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

It's much easier to consume the visual image than to read something.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

No, I didn't become disenchanted. I just couldn't paint like them.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

These are international criminals, and the spineless Democrats are doing nothing about it.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

It's the story of an American who wants to become a dictator and goes to Europe with a sidekick to interview various Fascists to find out how the Nazis and Mussolini got into power.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors; everything depends on the money.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Hope

They were looking for a stable, but we didn't have one. In fact, we weren't very stable ourselves.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom

Well, I didn't know how to draw very well back then, in the '40s and '50s.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Wisdom