Ezra Pound Quotes
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A people that grows accustomed to sloppy writing is a people in the process of losing grip on its empire and on itself.
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It would be about as easy for an American to become a Chinaman or a Hindoo as for him to acquire an Englishness or a Frenchness or a European-ness that is more than half skin deep.
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Usura slayeth the child in the womb It stayeth the young man's courting It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth between the young bride and her bridegroom.
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Christ can very well stand as an heroic figure. The hero need not be of wisdom all compounded. Also he is not wholly to blame for the religion that's been foisted on to him.
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The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.
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What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage.
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Why fight for a flag when you can buy one for a nickel.
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Presentation, not reference.
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The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth.
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Either move or be moved.
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See, they return; ah, see the tentative Movements, and the slow feet, The trouble in the pace and the uncertain Wavering! See, they return, one, and by one, With fear, as half-awakened; As if the snow should hesitate And murmur in the wind, and half turn back.
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Almost any fool can paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot off a Kodak.
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A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.
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The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left.
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Artists are the antennae of the race.
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Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint. He was a martyr. Like many martyrs, he held extreme views.
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Poetry is a language pared down to its essentials.
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Technique is the test of sincerity.
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There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight.
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No teacher has ever failed from ignorance. That is empiric professional knowledge. Teachers fail because they cannot `handle the class.' Real education must ultimately be limited to men how INSIST on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
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Utter originality is, of course, out of the question.
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And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
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America, my country, is almost a continent and hardly yet a nation.
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The individual cannot think and communicate his thought, the governor and legislator cannot act effectively or frame his laws without words, and the solidity and validity of these words is in the care of the damned and despised litterati...when their very medium, the very essence of their work, the application of word to thing goes rotten, i.e. becomes slushy and inexact, or excessive or bloated, the whole machinery of social and of individual thought and order goes to pot.