Works
Famous Carl Sandburg Quotes
“A baby is God's opinion that life should go on.”
Remembrance Rock (1948), Ch. 2, p. 7
Context: A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker.
“I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.”
Incidentals (1904)
Variant: I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.
Source: Breathing Tokens
Carl Sandburg Quotes about time
“Life is like an onion; you peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.”
Variant: Life is an onion - you peel it year by year and sometimes cry.
Source: Remembrance Rock
Variant: Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you.
“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.”
Declaration at his 85th birthday party (6 January 1963), as quoted in The Best of Ralph McGill : Selected Columns (1980) by Ralph McGill, edited by Michael Strickland, Harry Davis, and Jeff Strickland, p. 82
Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
As quoted without source in The School Musician Director and Teacher Vol. 43 (1971) by the American School Band Directors' Association
Carl Sandburg: Trending quotes
“I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs.”
Incidentals (1904); this is sometimes paraphrased: "I am an idealist. I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs."
Context: Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life. To be a good loser is to learn how to win. I was sure there are ten men in me and I do not know or understand one of them. I could safely declare, I am an idealist. A Parisian cynic says "I believe in nothing. I am looking for clues." My statement would be : I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs.
“I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.”
"Prairie" (1918)
Source: Cornhuskers
“Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?”
"Grass" (1918)
Context: p>Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?</p
Carl Sandburg Quotes
“Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen.”
Incidentals (1904); this is sometimes paraphrased: "I am an idealist. I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs."
Context: Back of every mistaken venture and defeat is the laughter of wisdom, if you listen. Every blunder behind us is giving a cheer for us, and only for those who were willing to fail are the dangers and splendors of life. To be a good loser is to learn how to win. I was sure there are ten men in me and I do not know or understand one of them. I could safely declare, I am an idealist. A Parisian cynic says "I believe in nothing. I am looking for clues." My statement would be : I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs.
Remembrance Rock (1948), Ch. 2, p. 7
Context: A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker.
“The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.”
"The People, Yes" (1936)
Context: The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold.
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.
"Under the Harvest Moon" (1916)
Context: Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.
"I Am the People, the Mob" (1916)
“The United States is, not are. The Civil War was fought over a verb.”
Comments at the centennial celebration of the Lincoln-Douglas debates; Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, Oct. 7, 1958. Quoted in Herbert Mitgang, "Again—Lincoln v. Douglas", The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 19, 1958, pp. 26-27.
Context: The United States is, not are. The Civil War was fought over a verb. Orval Faubus don't know that. But he gonna know, he gonna know.
Incidentals (1904)
Context: Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes. Today is here. If you don't know what to do, sit still and listen. You may hear something. Nobody knows.
We may pull apart the petals of a rose or make chemical analysis of its perfume, but the mystic beauty of its form and odor is still a secret, locked in to where we have no keys.
“The Republic is a dream.
Nothing happens unless first a dream.”
"Washington Monument by Night" in Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922)
Variant: Nothing happens unless first we dream.
Source: The Complete Poems
"Tentative (First Model)" Definitions of Poetry" in Complete Poems (1950)
"Egoism" as quoted by Amy Lowell, "Edgar Lee Masters and Carl Sandburg," Tendencies in Modern American Poetry http://books.google.com/books?id=UgZaAAAAMAAJ (1917)
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."
"The People, Yes" (1936)
“Man's life? A candle in the wind, hoar-frost on stone.”
The People, Yes http://books.google.com/books?id=bCSu8UHz9EUC&q=%22Man's+life+A+candle+in+the+wind+hoar+frost+on+stone%22&pg=PA509#v=onepage (1936)
On America, in Remembrance Rock (1948), epilogue, Ch. 2, p. 1001.
“The greatest cunning is to have none at all.”
This line appears in section 94 of "The People, Yes" (1936), but that section contains many common proverbs and expressions not original to Sandburg which he is merely quoting within the poem, including this one.
Misattributed
“The time for action is now. It's never too late to do something.”
Quoted as Sandburg in Stop Whining! Start Selling!: Profit-Producing Strategies for Explosive Sales Results (2003) by Jeff Blackman, but without citation of original source; this is elsewhere attributed to Antoine de Saint Exupéry, but also with no original sources cited.
Disputed
“I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it.”
As quoted in A Dictionary of Literary Quotations (1990) by Meic Stephens
Interview with Frederick Van Ryn, This Week Magazine (January 4, 1953), p. 11. Sandburg previously used these words at a rally at Madison Square Garden, New York City (October 28, 1952), praising Adlai E. Stevenson during the latter's 1952 presidential campaign. Reported in The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson (1955), vol. 4, p. 175.
“The name of an iron man goes round the world.
It takes a long time to forget an iron man.”
"Washington Monument by Night" in Slabs of the Sunburnt West (1922)
“One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude.”
As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 448
“The United States is, not are.”
The Civil War was fought over a verb. Orval Faubus don't know that. But he gonna know, he gonna know.
Comments at the centennial celebration of the Lincoln-Douglas debates; Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, Oct. 7, 1958. Quoted in Herbert Mitgang, "Again—Lincoln v. Douglas", The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 19, 1958, pp. 26-27.
