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Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet — whom Plato banned from his Republic — may rise up to save us all.

— Isaac Bashevis Singer Nobel lecture (1978)

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Poetry

More quotes by Isaac Bashevis Singer

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise… Because that is how life is — full of surprises.

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

I am a vegetarian for health reasons—the health of the chicken.

I am thankful, of course, for the prize and thankful to God for each story, each idea, each word, each day.

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Isaac Bashevis Singer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.