Carl Sandburg

The people will live on.The learning and blundering people will live on.

— Carl Sandburg

What else have I done nearly all my life than go hungry and go on singing?

— Carl Sandburg

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.

— Carl Sandburg

“Enough small empty boxes thrown into a big empty box fill it full.”

— Carl Sandburg

A liar is a liar and lives on the lies he tells and dies in a life of lies.

— Carl Sandburg

A tough will counts. So does desire.So does a rich soft wanting.Without rich wanting nothing arrives.

— Carl Sandburg

“Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it runs by.”

— Carl Sandburg

I have in later years taken to Euclid, Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, in an elemental way.

— Carl Sandburg

I am still studying verbs and the mystery of how they connect nouns. I am more suspicious of adjectives than at any…

— Carl Sandburg

Man is a long time coming. Man will yet win. Brother may yet line up with brother: This old anvil laughs at…

— Carl Sandburg

The impact of television on our culture is. . . indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important…

— Carl Sandburg

There is only one man in the world and his name is All Men. There is only one woman in the world…

— Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a section of river-fog and moving boat-lights, delivered between bridges and whistles, so one says, 'Oh!' and another, 'How?'

— Carl Sandburg

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the…

— Carl Sandburg

Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being…

— Carl Sandburg

The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one…

— Carl Sandburg

I could safely declare, I am an idealist... I believe in everything - I am only looking for proofs.

— Carl Sandburg

“Wishes left on your lips The mark of their wings. Regrets fly kites in your eyes.”

— Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the harnessing of the paradox of earth cradling life and then entombing it.

— Carl Sandburg

I am an idealist. I believe in everything — I am only looking for proofs.

— Carl Sandburg

I'll die propped up in bed trying to do a poem about America.

— Carl Sandburg

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.

— Carl Sandburg

The buffaloes are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

— Carl Sandburg

To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damned hard.

— Carl Sandburg

I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.

— Carl Sandburg

By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul.

— Carl Sandburg

Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of all evil, the sum of blessings.

— Carl Sandburg

The woman named Tomorrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and takes her time

— Carl Sandburg

We had two grand antique professors who had been teaching at Lombard since before I was born.

— Carl Sandburg

A tree is best measured when it is down - and so it is with people.

— Carl Sandburg

Love your neighbor as yourself but don't take down your fence.

— Carl Sandburg

“The squeaky wheel gets the grease, but the quacking duck gets shot.”

— Carl Sandburg

I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman.

— Carl Sandburg

Poetry is a dance music measuring buck-and-wing follies along with the gravest and stateliest dead-marches.

— Carl Sandburg

And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers. Go running back to dust and mist.

— Carl Sandburg

“Have I, have you, been too silent? Is there an easy crime of silence?”

— Carl Sandburg

Why does a hearse horse snicker, hauling a lawyer away?

— Carl Sandburg

There is only one child in the world and the Child’s name is All Children.

— Carl Sandburg

The scholars and poets of an earlier time can be read only with a dictionary to help.

— Carl Sandburg

Now is the time. It is never too late to start something.

— Carl Sandburg