Ezra Pound Quotes & Sayings

“Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.”

“And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.”

“The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.”

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”

“If a patron buys from an artist who needs money, the patron then makes himself equal to the artist; he is building art into the world; he creates.”

“I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.”

“It ought to be illegal for an artist to marry. If the artist must marry let him find someone more interested in art, or his art, or the artist part of him, than in him. After which let them take tea together three times a week.”

“Good art however 'immoral' is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.”

“The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.”

“Either move or be moved.”