Allen Ginsberg quotes

Born
June 3, 1926 Newark, New Jersey, U.S.

Died
April 5, 1997.

Occupation
Poet, philosopher, writer.

Allen Ginsberg was an American poet, writer, and social activist. He was one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation, a group of writers and artists of the 1950s and 1960s known for their rejection of traditional values and experimentation with drugs, sexuality, and Eastern spirituality.
Ginsberg’s most famous work is the long poem Howl, which was considered highly controversial for its graphic depiction of homosexuality and drug use.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
– Allen Ginsberg

Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.
– Allen Ginsberg

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
– Allen Ginsberg

I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.
– Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.
– Allen Ginsberg

I am 23, the year of the iron birthday, the gate of darkness. I am ill.
– Allen Ginsberg

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.
– Allen Ginsberg

I have been wrathful all my life, angry against my father and all others. My wrath must end. All my images now are of heaven.
– Allen Ginsberg

America, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
– Allen Ginsberg

Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.
– Allen Ginsberg

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.
– Allen Ginsberg

Poets are Damned… but See with the Eyes of Angels.
– Allen Ginsberg

I was putting on a stiff upper lip and trying to fulfill the obligations I thought were demanded of me, taking over my father’s role of taking care of my mother… and having to be the recipient of her confessions and emotions but of a delusional nature.
– Allen Ginsberg

I would say that Times Square was the central hangout for Burroughs, Kerouac, and myself from about 1945 to 1948.
– Allen Ginsberg

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.
– Allen Ginsberg

I recommend for any basic course on the Beat Generation to familiarize yourself with ‘The Idiot,’ Prince Myshkin. He was Dostoyevsky’s idea of the most beautiful human being he could imagine, the creation of a saint in literature.
– Allen Ginsberg

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!
– Allen Ginsberg

The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.
– Allen Ginsberg