Allen Ginsberg Quotes

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet. He is considered to be one of the leading figures of both the Beat Generation during the 1950s and the counterculture that soon followed. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism and sexual repression and was known as embodying various aspects of this counterculture, such as his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and openness to Eastern religions. He was one of many influential American writers of his time known as the Beat Generation, which included famous writers such as Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs.

Ginsberg is best known for his poem "Howl", in which he denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. In 1956, "Howl" was seized by San Francisco police and US Customs. In 1957, it attracted widespread publicity when it became the subject of an obscenity trial, as it described heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made homosexual acts a crime in every U.S. state. "Howl" reflected Ginsberg's own homosexuality and his relationships with a number of men, including Peter Orlovsky, his lifelong partner. Judge Clayton W. Horn ruled that "Howl" was not obscene, adding, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemisms?"

Ginsberg was a practicing Buddhist who studied Eastern religious disciplines extensively. He lived modestly, buying his clothing in second-hand stores and residing in downscale apartments in New York’s East Village. One of his most influential teachers was the Tibetan Buddhist the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa, the founder of the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. At Trungpa's urging, Ginsberg and poet Anne Waldman started The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics there in 1974.

Ginsberg took part in decades of non-violent political protest against everything from the Vietnam War to the War on Drugs. His poem "September on Jessore Road," calling attention to the plight of Bangladeshi refugees, exemplifies what the literary critic Helen Vendler described as Ginsberg's tireless persistence in protesting against "imperial politics, and persecution of the powerless."

His collection The Fall of America shared the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry in 1974. In 1979 he received the National Arts Club gold medal and was inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Ginsberg was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1995 for his book Cosmopolitan Greetings: Poems 1986–1992.

✵ 3. June 1926 – 5. April 1997

Allen Ginsberg photo

Ludwig Urning, The original description page was here. All following user names refer to de.wikipedia. / CC-BY-SA-3.0

Works

Howl and Other Poems

Howl and Other Poems

Allen Ginsberg

Reality Sandwiches

Allen Ginsberg

Howl

Allen Ginsberg

Howl and Other Poems

Howl and Other Poems

Allen Ginsberg

Reality Sandwiches

Allen Ginsberg

Howl

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg: 76 quotes76 likes

Famous Allen Ginsberg Quotes

Allen Ginsberg quote: “I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view.”

“I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view.”

“Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Variant: Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.
Source: Howl and Other Poems

“I know too much and not enough”

“We're all golden sunflowers inside.”

“Not even the human
imagination satisfies
the endless emptiness of the soul.”

Allen Ginsberg book Reality Sandwiches

Source: Reality Sandwiches

Allen Ginsberg quote: “Whoever controls the media, the
images, controls the culture.”

“Whoever controls the media, the
images, controls the culture.”

Allen Ginsberg Quotes about love

“The weight of the world is love.
Under the burden of solitude,
under the burden of dissatisfaction
the weight, the weight we carry is love.”

“My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use -- my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“No rest
without love,
No sleep
without dreams
of love -
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines
the final wish
is love.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“No rest without love,
no sleep without dreams of love-
be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines,
the final wish is love
-cannot be bitter, cannot deny,
cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“He saw that I was shy, and at the time I was still scared of feeling with another person, so he put his arm around me and pulled me and put my head on his breast and gave me love actually.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

Allen Ginsberg Quotes about the world

“Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.”

“I never dreamed the sea so deep,
The earth so dark; so long my sleep,
I have become another child.
I wake to see the world go wild.”

“This is the one and only
firmament; therefore
it is the absolute world.
There is no other world.
The circle is complete.
I am living in Eternity.
The ways of this world
are the ways of Heaven.”

“I learned a world from each / one whom I loved”

“I could issue manifestos summoning seraphim to revolt against the Haavenly State we're in, or trumpets to summon American mankind to rebellion against the Authority which has frozen all skulls in the cold war, That is, I could, make sense, invoke politics and try organize a union of opinion about what to do to Cuba, China, Russia, Bolivia, New Jersey, etc. However since in America the folks are convinced their heaven is all right, those manifestos make no dent except in giving authority & courage to the small band of hipsters who are disaffected like gentle socialists. Meanwhile the masses the proletariat the people are smug and the source of the great Wrong. So the means then is to communicate to the grand majority- and say I or anybody did write a balanced documented account not only of the lives of America but the basic theoretical split from the human body as Reich has done- But the people are so entrenched in their present livelihood that all the facts in the world-such as that China will be 1/4 of world pop makes no impression at all as a national political fact that intelligent people can take counsel on and deal with humorously & with magnificence. So that my task as a politician is to dynamite the emotional rockbed of inertia and spiritual deadness that hangs over the cities and makes everybody unconsciously afraid of the cops- To enter the Soul on a personal level and shake the emotion with the Image of some giant reality-of any kind however irrelevant to transient political issue- to touch & wake the soul again- That soul which is asleep or hidden in armor or unable to manifest itself as free life of God on earth- To remind by chord of deep groan of the Unknown to most Soul- then further politics will take place when people seize power over their universe and end the long dependence on an external authority or rhetorical set sociable emotions-so fixed they don't admit basic personal life changes-like not being afraid of jails and penury, while wandering thru gardens in high civilization.”

Gordon Ball (1977), Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties, Grove Press NY
Journals: Early Fifties Early Sixties

“The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does. By poetry I mean the imagining of what has been lost and what can be found—the imagining of who we are and the slow realization of it.”

As quoted in C. F. Main & Peter J. Seng, Poems (Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1973), p. 3

Allen Ginsberg: Trending quotes

“Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns?”

Source: Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems

“I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“A naked lunch is natural to us
We eat reality sandwiches.
But allegories are so much lettuce.
Don't hide the madness.”

Allen Ginsberg Quotes

Allen Ginsberg quote: “Our heads are round so thought can change direction”

“Our heads are round so thought can change direction”

“Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.”

“I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane.”

“Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.”

“Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!”

“If I had a soul I sold it
for pretty words
If I had a body I used
it up spurting my essence

Allen Ginsberg warns you
dont follow my path
to extinction”

“I don't do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision.”

Source: The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice: First Journals and Poems 1937-1952

“Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. But with death comes rebirth. And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet.”

“I smoke marijuana every chance I get.”

America (1956)

“Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel!”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.”

“Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.”

“America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.”

America (1956)

“Everybody's serious but me.”

“What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“what sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness.”

“My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.”

“To gain your own voice you have to forget about having it heard.”

“America, why are your libraries full of tears?”

“Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illumnations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night”

Source: Howl: Original Draft Facsimile

“America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.”

“Well, while I'm here I'll do the work — and what's the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow.”

“What if someone gave a war and Nobody came?”

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?”

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“The closet door is open for me, where I left it, since I left it open, it has graciously stayed open.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art.”

“I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl

Howl (1956)

“Sanity - a trick of agreement”

“All these books are published in Heaven.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene”

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“I know I'm not God, are you? Don't be silly.
God? God? Everybody's God? Don't be silly.”

Source: Death and Fame: Last Poems, 1993-1997

“You too must seek the sun…”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Source: Howl and Other Poems

“The universe is mad, slightly mad.”

Allen Ginsberg book Reality Sandwiches

Source: Reality Sandwiches

“he threw up his hands
and wrote the Universe dont exist
and died to prove it”

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy!”

“I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?”

“Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me
Belly to belly and knee to knee
Who’ll look into my hooded eye
Who’ll lie down under my darkened thigh?”

Source: Collected Poems 1947-1997

“Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath,
As I lay my body down
Between the ache of breath and breath,
Golden slumber in the bone.”

Source: Collected Poems 1947-1997

“Many seek and never see,
anyone can tell them why.
O they weep and O they cry
and never take until they try
unless they try it in their sleep
and never some until they die.
I ask many, they ask me.
This is a great mystery.”

Source: Collected Poems 1947-1997

“Scientist alone is true poet.”

“The war is language,
language abused
for Advertisement,
language used
like magic for power on the planet.”

From Wichita Vortex Sutra (1966)

“Nobody knows whether we were catalysts or invented something, or just the froth riding on a wave of its own. We were all three, I suppose.”

Glen Burns (1983), Great Poets Howl: A Study of Allen Ginsberg's Poetry, 1943-1955, Peter Lang GmbH, ISBN 3-8204-7761-6.
Great Poets Howl

“America, Sacco & Vanzetti must not die.”

America (1956)

“You assume we are all sexually stable; while on the other hand, as I have become acquainted with people, I find that they are all perverted sinners, one way or another, that the whole society is corrupt and rotten and repressed and unconscious that it exhibits its repression in various forms of social sadism.”

Family Business: Selected Letters Between a Father and Son, Allen and Louis Ginsberg (1944-1976), Michael Schumacher (ed.) (2001), Bloomsbury Publishing NY, ISBN 1582341079, p. 21.
Family Business

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