In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them. There is no such thing as bad art.

I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.

If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest.The blessing is in the seed.

Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.

Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.

The journey is my home.

I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.

The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.

Exchange is creation.

In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.

Editors have grown timid... a brave advance is almost inevitably followed by quick back-tracking, generally by dilution and debasement of the original intention.

I hope for quick, fluent copy and memorable pictures. The words would not 'describe' the pictures; the pictures would not 'illustrate' the words. Together, they would carry a stamp and tell a story.

I learned that I had been brought up as a protected, blindfolded daughter.

I should like to use another word: 'audience' or 'reader' or 'listener' seems inadequate. I suggest the old word 'witness,' which includes the act of seeing and knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence.

It is the single image, as used in a photograph or a painting - or the frame of a film - to which words have been added to enlarge the context. The method is not the same as that by which most paintings are named. It is closer in its performance to what dialogue does to a movie, to what the caption does to a good poster.

Local images have one kind of reality. 'U.S. 1' will, I hope, have that kind and another, too. Poetry can extend the document.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.

One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being violent or obscure.

The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry.

The advertising men made it clear that there were two ways of looking at ideas in a war against fascism. Those of us who were working on the project believed ideas were to be fought for; the advertising men believed they were to be sold. The audience, those at home in wartime, were not 'citizens' or 'people.' They were 'customers.'

The town of Gauley Bridge stands as a pattern for all those places where people are linked even in the middle of their suffering, where people fight against an evil condition so that other people need not go through the same fight.

A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.

However confused the scene of our life appears however torn we may be who now do face that scene it can be faced and we can go on to be whole.

Dogma and shrinking from the external world are at one limit of the range of belief. At the other are science and poetry and indeed reality.

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling . . .. A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually - that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too, but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.

The goal is to give people a free encyclopedia to every person in the world, in their own language. Not just in a 'free beer' kind of way, but also in the free speech kind of way.

The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.

Worrying that banning flag desecration would inhibit free speech reveals a misunderstanding of the flag's fundamental nature.

Today it is becoming harder to speak out, with the inception of the Patriot Act, the president has legislated free speech to be a crime.

By placing discretion in the hands of an official to grant or deny a license, such a statute creates a threat of censorship that by its very existence chills free speech.

Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.

I don't think we should be deprived of the privilege of free speech.

Everybody favours free speech in the slack moments when no axes are being ground.

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

Now is the time to draw a clean, clear, bright line and say if you are engaging in speech over the Internet you do not have to check with your lawyer or your accountant. You are a free American, and you have the opportunity to engage in free speech over the Internet.

Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech.

Nor was it only from the millions of slaves that chains had been removed; the whole nation had been in bondage; free speech had been suppressed.

The political core of any movement for freedom in the society has to have the political imperative to protect free speech.

Free speech means the right to shout 'theatre' in a crowded fire.