Ezra Pound Quotes
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Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.
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Sovereignty inheres in the right to issue money. And the American sovereignty belongs by right to the people, and their representatives in Congress have the right to issue money and to determine the value thereof. And 120 million, 120 million suckers have lamentably failed to insist on the observation of this quite decided law. ... Now the point at which embezzlement of the nation's funds on the part of her officers becomes treason can probably be decided only by jurists, and not by hand-picked judges who support illegality.
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The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets its literature decay, and lets good writing meet with contempt, than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts.
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I have always thought the suicide should bump off at least one swine before taking off for parts unknown.
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The temple is holy because it is not for sale.
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If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establish his point.
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Small talk comes from small bones.
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A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.
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A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.
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Democracy is now currently defined in Europe as a 'country run by Jews,'
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The age demanded an image Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace.
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If a patron buys from an artist who needs money (needs money to buy tools, time, food), the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.
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The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.
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I did not enter into silence. Silence captured me.
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Poetry must be as well written as prose.
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One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns.
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Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
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The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
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It is the business of the artist to make humanity aware of itself.
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Nothing written for pay is worth printing. Only what has been written against the market.
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A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
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If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good.
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There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.
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America is a lunatic asylum.