Journalism wishes to tell what it is that has happened everywhere as though the same things had happened for every man. Poetry wishes to say what it is like for any man to be himself in the presence of a particular occurrence as though only he were alone there.

What is wrong is not the great discoveries of science—information is always better than ignorance, no matter what information or what ignorance. What is wrong is the belief behind the information, the belief that information will change the world. It won’t.

America is promises to take! America is promises to us to take them.

There is no dusk to be, There is no dawn that was, Only there's now, and now, And the wind in the grass.

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

Man can live his truth, his deepest truth, but cannot speak it.

The American journey has not ended. America is always still to build ... West is a country in the mind, and so eternal.