Joseph Brodsky Quotes
The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.
Quotes to Explore
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Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.
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If you ask an economist what's driven economic growth, it's been major advances in things that mattered - the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.
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A society of 'children first' is a society that nurtures smiling faces in everyone.
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I want to prove that if you write in strict meter and rhyme about subjects people care about, they will buy poetry.
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When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.
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Artists are political in the sense that they've subtracted themselves from the structure of the marketplace and are contributing something that's not utilitarian. Even though books get sold, and I get advances, I get to look at society and think for a living.
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Rising anti-Semitism is rarely the lone or the last expression of intolerance in a society.
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What 'Deadwood' did was to talk about how capitalism started, how civilised society came in, and how that brought its own problems.
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I think the ideology of the Congress is closest to mine. Congress is a party where I should be. I have joined politics to bring change in society. The Congress gave me a chance with the Aadhaar project. It's a party that will allow me to bring change.
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I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry.
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As governor, I will always be willing to work with people who have ideas to offer and are ready to roll up their sleeves. That kind of teamwork will build a New Hampshire that will lead the nation and compete with the world. Together, we will help our businesses grow and build a stronger economy on a vision of innovation and growth.
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When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.
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Modern society has evolved to the point where we counter the old-fashioned fatalism surrounding the word 'cancer' by embracing the idea of the Uber-mind - that our will possesses nearly supernatural powers.
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Do-gooders are easily overlooked. We're supposed to be soft, touchy-feely types, who wear Birkenstocks, compost everything, and write poetry by candlelight.
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Terror will crash down on us if we fail to understand that a pluralistic society requires the personal and daily commitment of every citizen.
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I was a science fiction geek. That lets you know that they come in all sizes and styles, right?
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Infant mortality and life expectancy are reasonable indicators of general well-being in a society.
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War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults.
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All this probing and grappling we must do, out in society: how much easier, Annabelle thinks, it is to stay in rooms you know as well as your own body, having a warm meal and an evening of television, where it's all so comfortably one-way.
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Of course we wish that more people involved in the leak of my true CIA identity had been prosecuted, but the system worked.
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'Why don't we just leave this room today forgetting the word 'earmark'?'-June 2007
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I never think about what I want. It's about what you want to give to other people.
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The charge frequently leveled against poetry - that it is difficult, obscure, hermetic and whatnot - indicates not the state of poetry but, frankly, the rung of the evolutionary ladder on which society is stuck.
