Robert Penn Warren Quotes

Quotes about:

• The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

  Robert Penn Warren

  History, Damnation, World

  "Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Development". Book by Chris Maser, 1999.

  49 Copy quote

• The asking and the answering which history provides may help us to understand, even to frame, the logic of experience to which we shall submit. History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Common Humanity, Giving, Understanding

  Robert Penn Warren (1961). “The Legacy of the Civil War”, p.100, U of Nebraska Press

  31 Copy quote

• You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.391, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Knowledge, Men, Ends

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  60 Copy quote

• I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Thinking, Engineering, Ideas

  34 Copy quote

• Everything seems an echo of something else.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Echoes, Seems

  Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (1998). “The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren”, p.325, LSU Press

  40 Copy quote

• The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Light, Poetry, May

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

  16 Copy quote

• Tell me a story.
  In this century, and moment, of mania,
  Tell me a story.
  Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.
  The name of the story will be Time,
  But you must not pronounce its name.
  Tell me a story of deep delight.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Distance, Names, Delight

  Robert Penn Warren, “Tell Me A Story”

  13 Copy quote

• And what we students of history always learn is that the human being is a very complicated contraption and that they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of the bad and the bad out of the good, and the devil take the hindmost.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Devil, Students, Complicated

  Robert Penn Warren (1996). “All the King's Men”, p.372, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  36 Copy quote

• For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Self, Poetry, Understanding

  1985 In the New York Times, 12 May.

  8 Copy quote

• To be an American is not...a matter of blood; it is a matter of an idea--and history is the image of that idea.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Blood, Ideas, Matter

  6 Copy quote

• Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Men, Soul, Sells

  Robert Penn Warren (1996). “All the King's Men”, p.593, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  29 Copy quote

• If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Past, Burden, Accepting

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.656, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  18 Copy quote

• Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Real, Writing, Needs

  21 Copy quote

• A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Distance, Past, History

  Robert Penn Warren (1977). “A Time to Hear and Answer: Essays for the Bicentennial Season”, University of Alabama Press

  6 Copy quote

• Goodness . . . You got to make it out of badness . . . Because there isn't anything else to make it out of.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Goodness, Badness

  27 Copy quote

• If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it...if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Happiness, Thinking, Looks

  22 Copy quote

• In separateness only does love learn definition.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Doe, Definitions, Separateness

  Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (1998). “The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren”, p.71, LSU Press

  4 Copy quote

• History is all explained by geography.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Geography

  Robert Penn Warren, Floyd C. Watkins, John T. Hiers (1980). “Robert Penn Warren talking: interviews, 1950-1978”, Random House (NY)

  18 Copy quote

• The past is always a rebuke to the present.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Past, History, Rebuke

  Robert Penn Warren, Floyd C. Watkins, John T. Hiers (1980). “Robert Penn Warren talking: interviews, 1950-1978”, Random House (NY)

  14 Copy quote

• Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They're inexpensive and easy to procure.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Two, Amusement, Easy

  "Newsweek" Magazine, August 25, 1980.

  21 Copy quote

• So little time we live in Time,
  And we learn all so painfully,
  That we may spare this hour's term
  To practice for Eternity.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Time, Practice, May

  Robert Penn Warren, John Burt (1998). “The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren”, p.66, LSU Press

  6 Copy quote

• A young man's ambition - to get along in the world and make a place for himself - half your life goes that way, till you're 45 or 50. Then, if you're lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Ambition, Men, Age

  The New York Times, June 2, 1981.

  13 Copy quote

• Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Boys, Mad, Laughing

  17 Copy quote

• It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Self, Trying, Defects

  "All the King's Men".

  24 Copy quote

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