Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. Profoundly inspirational Allen Ginsberg quotes will brighten up your day and make you feel ready to take on anything.
If you’re searching for poetry quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of profound Bertolt Brecht quotes, famous Chinua Achebe quotes and top Dante Alighieri quotes.
Famous Allen Ginsberg Quotes
Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. – Allen Ginsberg
I don’t think there is any truth. There are only points of view. 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 saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night. Allen Ginsberg
I am 23, the year of the iron birthday, the gate of darkness. I am ill. Allen Ginsberg
Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don’t care who’s listening. Allen Ginsberg
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa! Allen Ginsberg
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does. Allen Ginsberg
I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs when I was 17 that I realized I was talking through an empty skull. I wasn’t thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts. Allen Ginsberg
Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture. 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
Our heads are round so thought can change direction. 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
I don’t do anything with my life except romanticize and decay with indecision. Allen Ginsberg
Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture. Allen Ginsberg
Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private. Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked. Allen Ginsberg
I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I’ll never be sane. Allen Ginsberg
America, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. Allen Ginsberg
Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel! Allen Ginsberg
Poets are Damned but See with the Eyes of Angels. Allen Ginsberg
We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter. Allen Ginsberg
Ultimately Warhol’s private moral reference was to the supreme kitsch of the Catholic church. Allen Ginsberg
I really would like to stop working forever never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I’d like to keep living with someone maybe even a man and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city hermit existence. Allen Ginsberg
My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed. Allen Ginsberg
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa! Allen Ginsberg
Fortunately art is a community effort a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh. Allen Ginsberg
It isn’t enough for your heart to break because everybody’s heart is broken now. Allen Ginsberg
Black musicians were imitating speech cadences, and Kerouac was imitating the black musicians breath cadences on their horns and brought it back to speech. It always was speech rhythms or cadences as far as the ear that Kerouac was developing. All passed through black music. Allen Ginsberg
I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd. 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
To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness. Allen Ginsberg
The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction. Allen Ginsberg
Just because I like to suck cock doesn’t make me any less American than Jesse Helms. Allen Ginsberg
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does. Allen Ginsberg
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! and you, Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? Allen Ginsberg
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel. Allen Ginsberg
Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns? 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
My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven’t disappeared, time’s left its remnants and qualities for me to use my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves. Allen Ginsberg
America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? Allen Ginsberg
Well, while I’m here I’ll do the work and what’s the work? To ease the pain of living. Everything else, drunken dumbshow. Allen Ginsberg
The motif of Beat Generation is basically misunderstood, a misinterpreted area. There’s this superimposition of the idea of a social rebellion, which was the communist interpretation through Lawrence Lipton. Allen Ginsberg
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illumnations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! 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
You see those guys wearing baggy pants, descendants of the parachute pants, wearing an odd, weird Frankenstein haircut. It all comes out of Peter Lorre. Allen Ginsberg
What if someone gave a war and Nobody came? Allen Ginsberg
I would say that Times Square was the central hangout for Burroughs, Kerouac, and myself from about 1945 to 1948. Allen Ginsberg
I learned a world from each one whom I loved. Allen Ginsberg
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does. Allen Ginsberg
Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise? Allen Ginsberg
No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love. Allen Ginsberg
The closet door is open for me, where I left it, since I left it open, it has graciously stayed open. Allen Ginsberg
I never dreamed the sea so deep, the earth so dark; so long my sleep, I have become another child. I wake to see the world go wild. Allen Ginsberg
Since art is merely and ultimately self expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art. Allen Ginsberg
Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. But with death comes rebirth. And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet. 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
The universe is mad, slightly mad. Allen Ginsberg
All these books are published in Heaven. Allen Ginsberg
I have no other possessions of value but my soul. Allen Ginsberg
You too must seek the sun. Allen Ginsberg
The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction. Allen Ginsberg
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then! Allen Ginsberg
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky! Allen Ginsberg
The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene. Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. Allen Ginsberg
He saw that I was shy, and at the time I was still scared of feeling with another person, so he put his arm around me and pulled me and put my head on his breast and gave me love actually. Allen Ginsberg
America, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing. I can’t stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade. Allen Ginsberg
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. Allen Ginsberg
I don’t do anything with my life except romanticise and decay with indecision. Allen Ginsberg
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood? Allen Ginsberg
We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we’re all beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we’re blessed by our own seed hairy naked accomplishment bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision. Allen Ginsberg
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and psychopathic anyway. Allen Ginsberg
I had a moment of clarity, saw the feeling in the heart of things, walked out to the garden crying. Allen Ginsberg
Everybody’s serious but me. Allen Ginsberg
You know me now. I’m only good at beginnings. Allen Ginsberg
America, why are your libraries full of tears? Allen Ginsberg
I have just discovered that I have no feelings, just thoughts, borrowed thoughts taken from someone I admire because he seems to have feelings. Allen Ginsberg
We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we are all golden sunflowers from inside. Allen Ginsberg
What came is gone forever every time. Allen Ginsberg
