The ideal of universal literacy, in the West anyway, was first of all a Protestant idea - that everybody had to be… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
It was one of the great mass achievements of American civilization, and we did it because we thought if you were going… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
What we usually find is that when people think they have a new idea or approach something for the first time, it… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
I think that the job of poetry, its political job, is to refresh the idea of justice, which is going dead in… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
[Osip] Mandelstam, who wasn't a political thinker, loved the idea of the city-state. One of the emblems in his poetry of the… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
I think that were I in the middle of an obsession to write about, say, sudden oak death in California or my… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
After Pope, in the beginning of Romanticism, people developed the idea that imagination rather than reason was a special form of knowledge… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
Everybody has a different idea of when those good old days were, but everyone is convinced that there was a time when… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
It's the same with this idea of a literate public, and also of a democracy in which people have access to and… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
At some level, you have to be able to say, "This is my task." It's in small, local ways that you keep… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
It's the same with this idea of a literate public, and also of a democracy in which people have access to and really read… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
All the new thinking is about loss. In this it resembles all the old thinking — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
Poetry, when it takes sides, when it proposes solutions, isn't any smarter than anybody else. — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
When I was in college, I lost my scholarship one year. I had enough money for tuition, but not room and board. So I… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
After Pope, in the beginning of Romanticism, people developed the idea that imagination rather than reason was a special form of knowledge and its… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
They are the kinds of things that make us a community: attachment to place, attachment to local arts traditions, the ability to read literature,… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
I think that were I in the middle of an obsession to write about, say, sudden oak death in California or my grandchildren or… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
If you were making poetry out of convictions - trying to convince other people - you were in the territory of rhetoric, and that… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
Milton was the first person who really experimented with putting politics into sonnets. — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
When I came into the job, funding for the humanities at the federal level was being drastically cut. This was the high tide of… — Robert Hass Copy Share Image
![“[Osip] Mandelstam, who wasn't a political thinker, loved the idea of the city-state. One of the emblems in his poetry of the politics he imagined, over and against the universalizing politics of [Carl] Marx, was the medieval city of Novgorod, which had in its center a public well where the water…” quote by Robert Hass](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/deb/robert-hass-3548_cities_osip-mandelstam-who-wasn-t-a-political-t_380078.jpg)
