Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburgwas an American poet, writer, and editor who 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, Cornhuskers, and Smoke and Steel. 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",...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth6 January 1878
CountryUnited States of America
Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn child.
Time is the coin of our live. We must take care how we spend it.
Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder.
There is an eagle in me that wants to soar, and there is a hippopotamus in me that wants to wallow in the mud.
To be a good loser is to learn how to win.
Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
The single clenched fist lifted and ready, Or the open asking hand held out and waiting. Choose: For we meet by one or the other.
Nothing happens unless first we dream.
It is necessary ... for a man to go away by himself ... to sit on a rock ... and ask, 'Who am I, where have I been, and where am I going?
Sandburg's retelling of Lincoln's attendance at an evangelist rally led by Peter Cartwright in 1846, in response to accusations by Cartwright's followers that he was an "infidel" - Cartwright was his opponent in his race for Congress:
I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth and never cherishes any memory except the face of the woman on the American silver dollar
If America forgets where she came from, if the people lose sight of what brought them along, if she listens to the deniers and mockers, then will begin the rot and dissolution.
I am the people - the mob - the crowd - the mass. Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
Men of ideas vanish first when freedom vanishes.