“I am trying to voice a plea for the patterning of a more beautiful and secure human world.” – Irma Meyers, Vallejo poet

“Don’t bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.” ― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen … Perhaps it can’t be done without the poet, but it certainly can’t be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that’s all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.” ― James Baldwin

”Any poet laureate who rests on his laurels is wearing them in the wrong place.” – Harold Coffin

“All poets are rebels, always have been down through the centuries. Rebels against social injustice, greed, ruthlessness, everything that turns the glorious adventure of life into something less than it might be.” – Lucia Trent, Founder of October 15th World Poetry Day

“Poetry being the most passionate verbal expression of the most passionate life, is necessarily a revolutionary force misunderstood or hated by the cozy-minded and the authoritarians.” – Ralph Cheyney, founder of Western Poets Congress

“Of course, poets are rebels–at least, most of them. That is why they are stoned by one generation and receive monuments in the next. They are the pioneers of thought, the thinkers of individual genius, objects of fear and offence to the conventional herd.” – F.J.M.

“Poetry is not only words set in a pattern in lines of type, or words you can hear a poet speak; poetry is something vitally more. Poetry is an attitude towards life, a reaching after that phase of living which lights up the very core of existence, that lights our deepest moods, our union with all unutterable mystery.” – Ralph Cheyney, More Power to Poets

“Poets at their best are also prophets–ambassadors of the future, destroyers of the present.” – Jack Conroy

“Always send a stamped addressed envelope with the contribution. Drop it in the post office and then run home as fast as you can and see if you can reach home before the editor returns it.” – Abner Bangs, esq.

“Poetry is the thought of tomorrow on the tongue of today, but it is the heart that speaks it.” – Ralph Cheyney

“Poets are not gods who can subsist on star dust and applause alone.” – Carl Cave, President of Poet Laureate League of America

“One of the objects of the Poet Laureate League, which has been formed in America, is to secure justice for poets. We can only hope that it will be tempered with mercy. – Punch

“There are 40,000 poets in the United States. Of them the ones who earn a living writing poetry almost may be counted on the fingers of one hand.” – Harriet Monroe, founder of Poetry magazine

“There has been a lot of talk about free verse, but I am against it. Poets should be paid like all other working people.” – Abner Bangs, esq.

“All poets have their creative periods, and their fallow periods. All people are poets at times; nobody is a poet all of the time.” – Ralph Cheyney, founder of Western Poets Congress, More Power to Poets

“Anyone with an urge to write can, with training, produce a good one, but a poem must contain an idea. It is the most important ingredient of a poem. Many learning poetry write poems well, but have nothing to say and thus fail in the endeavor.” – Marcus Zearing Lytle, founder of Chaparral Poets

“To designate a poet laureate is to take an ordinary dreamy-headed poet and make him or her into an empty-headed government functionary, someone who attends meetings of other states poets laureate. If the citizens of Minnesota really want to honor their poets they can better do so by buying their books, attending their readings, buying them lunch, and lobbying to increase funding for the organizations that support poets.” – Louis Jenkins

“I don’t think the ills I point to in my poems can be solved without a revolution.” – Milton Alcorn

“Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.” ― Greg Bear

“They have the guns, we have the poets. Therefore, we will win.” ― Howard Zinn