Famous Carl Sandburg Quotations

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"Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time."
by Carl Sandburg
"Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work."
by Carl Sandburg
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."
by Carl Sandburg
"Valor is a gift. Those having it never know for sure whether they have it till the test comes. And those having it in one test never know for sure if they will have it when the next test comes."
by Carl Sandburg
"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
by Carl Sandburg
"A baby is God's opinion that life should go on"
by Carl Sandburg
"Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper until you get the right answer."
by Carl Sandburg
"History is a living horse laughing at a wooden horse. History is a wind blowing where it listeth. History is no sure thing to bet on. History is a box of tricks with a lost key. History is a labyrinth of doors with sliding panels, a book of ciphers with the code in a cave of the Saragossa sea. History says, if it pleases, Excuse me, I beg your pardon, it will never happen again if I can help it."
by Carl Sandburg
"I have become infected, now that I see how beautifully a book is coming out of all this."
by 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."
by Carl Sandburg
"I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes."
by Carl Sandburg
"I won't take my religion from any man who never works except with his mouth."
by Carl Sandburg
"I'm an idealist. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm on my way."
by Carl Sandburg
"In reply to the question, What was it the last man on earth said Where is everybody"
by Carl Sandburg
"Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by."
by Carl Sandburg
"Let the gentle bush dig its root deep and spread upward to split the boulder."
by Carl Sandburg
"Money is power, freedom, a cushion, the root of al evil, the sum of all blessings."
by Carl Sandburg
"My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall."
by Carl Sandburg
"Nothing happens unless first a dream."
by Carl Sandburg
"One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude."
by Carl Sandburg
"Our lives are like a candle in the wind."
by Carl Sandburg
"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance."
by Carl Sandburg
"Slang is the language which takes off its coat, spits on its hands - and goes to work"
by Carl Sandburg
"The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible."
by Van Wyck Brooks
"The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on."
by Carl Sandburg
"The fog comes on little cat feet. It sits looking over harbor and city on silent haunches and then moves on."
by Carl Sandburg
"The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to."
by Carl Sandburg
"There are dreams stronger than death. Men and women die holding these dreams."
by Carl Sandburg
"There have been as many varieties of socialists as there are wild birds that fly in the woods and sometimes go up and on through the clouds."
by 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."
by Carl Sandburg
"When a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They lost sight of what had brought them along."
by Carl Sandburg
"I never made a mistake in grammar but one in my life and as soon as I done it I seen it."
by Carl Sandburg
"Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years."
by Carl Sandburg
"To work hard, to live hard, to die hard, and then go to hell after all would be too damn hard."
by Carl Sandburg
"The sea speaks a language polite people never repeat. It is a colossal scavenger slang and has no respect."
by Carl Sandburg
"Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away."
by Carl Sandburg
"Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all."
by Carl Sandburg
"The people will live on. The learning and blundering people will live on."
by Carl Sandburg
"A baby is God's opinion that life should go on."
by Carl Sandburg


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