4 E. E. Cummings Quotes on Politics

E. E. Cummings quotes on politics

26. a politician is an arse upon which everyone has sat except a man

39. If you're a twofisted, spineless progressive (a mighty fashionable stance nowadays) Offissa Pupp, who forcefully asserts the will of socalled society, becomes a cosmic angel; while Ignatz Mouse, who forcefully defies society's socalled will by asserting his authentic own, becomes a demon of anarchy and a fiend of chaos. But if - whisper it - you're a 100% hidebound reactionary, the foot's in the other shoe. Ignatz Mouse then stands forth as a hero, pluckily struggling to keep the flag of free will flying; while Offissa Pupp assumes the monstrous mien of a Goliath, satanically bullying a tiny but indomitable David. Well, let's flip the coin - so: and lo! Offissa Pupp comes up. That makes Ignatz Mouse 'tails.' Now we have a hero whose heart has gone to his head and a villain whose head has gone to his heart.

53. concerning this selfstyled world's greatest and most generous literary figure: who had just arrived in our nation's capitol, attired in half a GI uniform and ready to be hanged as a traitor by the only country which ever made even a pretense of fighting for freedom of speech Re Ezra Pound - poetry happens to be an art;and artists happen to be human beings.

54. An artist doesn't live in some geographical abstraction,superimposed on a part of this beautiful earth by the nonimagination of unanimals and dedicated to the proposition that massacre is a social virtue because murder is an individual vice. Nor does an artist live in some soi-disant world,nor does he live in some so-called universe,nor does he live in any number of 'worlds' or in any number of 'universes.' As for a few trifling delusions like the 'past' and 'present' and 'future' of quote mankind unquote,they may be big enough for a couple of billion supermechanized submorons but they're much too small for one human being.