In the Soviet Union, government controls industry. In the United States, industry controls government. That is the principal structural difference between the two great oligarchies of our time.

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

All dams are ugly, but the Glen Canyon Dam is sinful ugly.

I don't see how poetry can ever be easy... Real poetry, the thick, dense, intense, complicated stuff that lives and endures, requires blood sweat; blood and sweat are essential elements in poetry as well as behind it.

In the modern world, all literary art is necessarily political -- especially that which pretends not to be.

The ideal society can be described, quite simply, as that in which no man has the power of means to coerce others.

I, too, believe in fidelity. But how can I be true to one woman without being false to all the others?