Lawrence Ferlinghetti quotes

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was an American poet, painter, and publisher associated with the Beat Generation. His bookstore, City Lights, became a cultural landmark and a center for literary innovation. He inspired generations of writers and artists with his commitment to free expression and social justice. Here are 53 of his quotes:

I think if there's a great depression there might be some hope. (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

Poetry is the shadow cast by our imaginations.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it's the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it's a failure in communication.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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)

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

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn, that Bridge was too much for me.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

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

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

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am
constantly shocking. (Lawrence Ferlinghetti)

I am waiting for the lost music to sound again in a new rebirth of wonder.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The pennycandystore beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It was a face which darkness could kill in an instant.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Previous
1 (Current)
2
3
Next

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti - Image

Photo: Wikimedia commons, CC BY-SA 3.0

Occupation: American Artist
Born: March 24, 1919
Died: February 22, 2021
Quotes count: 53
Wikipedia: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Related authors

Allen Ginsberg 83

American Poet

Gregory Corso 15

American Poet

Jack Kerouac 286

American Novelist

Neal Cassady 4

American Writer

Gary Snyder 24

American Poet

Kenneth Rexroth 43

American Poet

William S. Burroughs 189

American Novelist

William Carlos Williams 99

American Poet

Walt Whitman 274

American Poet

Nancy Peters 15

American Writer