Quotations from

Carl Sandburg

About

Picture of Carl Sandburg

Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life". When he died in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."

from Wikipedia

Quotes from Carl Sandburg

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

—Carl Sandburg

Nothing happens unless first we dream.

—Carl Sandburg

I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way.

—Carl Sandburg

I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.

—Carl Sandburg

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.

—Carl Sandburg

I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth.

—Carl Sandburg

War is not nice.

—Carl Sandburg

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most supercolossal of our supercargo planes don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable.

—Carl Sandburg

Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.

—Carl Sandburg

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

—Carl Sandburg