A Quote by Isaac Asimov

One of Walt Whitman's best-known poems is this one: When I heard the learn'd astronomer,.... The trouble is, Whitman is talking through his hat, but the poor soul didn't know any better

Isaac Asimov

Quote Topics

Any Best Better Hat Heard His Know Known Learn Poems Poor Soul Talking Through Trouble Walt

Quote Author

Isaac Asimov
American - Scientist
January 2, 1920 - April 6, 1992

Walt Whitman's a hell of a lot more revolutionary than any Russian poet I've ever heard of.

John Dos Passos

When I was young I once found a book in a Dutch translation, 'The leaves of Grass'. It was the first time a book touched me by its feeling of freedom and open spaces, the way the poet spoke of the ocean by describing a drop of water in his hand. Walt Whitman was offering the world an open hand (now we call it democracy) and my 'Monument for Walt Whitman' became this open hand with mirrors, so you can see inside yourself.

Karel Appel

Walt Whitman and Emerson are the poets who have given the world more than anyone else. Perhaps Whitman is not so widely read in England, but England never appreciates a poet until he is dead.

Oscar Wilde

I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is HOT! I mean, that guy could sound his barbaric yawps over the roofs of my world any time.

John Green

The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.

Edgar Lee Masters

Shane Johnson and I coincidently went to Whitman College. This is notable because Whitman is teeny-tiny, with only 1,200 students. He graduated the spring before I started, so we didn't know each other.

Lela Loren

I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman's mind to be more like my own than any other man's living.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Walt Whitman is the only great modern poet who does not seem to experience discord when he faces his world. Not even solitude - his monologue is a universal chorus.

Octavio Paz

I have the kiss of Walt Whitman still on my lips

Oscar Wilde

I have never read a line of Walt Whitman.

Mary MacLane

I don't know about that. I'm not a very analytical person. I have various impulses. I've often quoted Walt Whitman's phrase "I contain multitudes." I understand that.

Patti Smith

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?

Allen Ginsberg

[Walt] Whitman and [humanist educator John] Dewey tried to substitute hope for knowledge. They wanted to put shared utopian dreams - dreams of an ideally decent and civilized society - in the place of knowledge of God's Will, Moral Law, the Laws of History, or the Facts of Science.... As long as we have a functioning political left, we still have a chance to achieve our country, to make it the country of Whitman's and Dewey's dreams.