Robert Penn Warren Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  22 Copy quote

• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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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

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• 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

  36 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.

  17 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”

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• Politics is a matter of choices, and a man doesn't set up the choices himself. And there is always a price to make a choice. You know that. You've made a choice, and you know how much it cost you. There is always a price.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Men, Choices, Cost

  Robert Penn Warren (1946). “All the king's men”

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• 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

  37 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.

  9 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

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• 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

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• 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)

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• 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

• Your business as a writer is not to illustrate virtue but to show how a fellow may move toward it or away from it.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Moving, Vices, May

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

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• 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

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

  Robert Penn Warren

  Real, Writing, Needs

  21 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

  23 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

• Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Inspirational, Motivational, History

  Cleanth Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, James A. Grimshaw (1998). “Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren: A Literary Correspondence”, p.15, University of Missouri Press

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• Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something (All The King's Men)

  Robert Penn Warren

  Kings, Men, Sin

  Robert Penn Warren (2006). “All the King's Men”, p.235, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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

• 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)

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• The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Meaningful, Writing, Men

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

  25 Copy quote

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