“Books -where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas”

“Because my mouth Is wide with laughterAnd my throat Is deep with song,You do not thinkI suffer afterI have held my painSo long?Because my mouth Is wide with laughterYou do not hear My inner cry?Because my feet Are gay with dancing You do not knowI die?”

“Lawrence has a wonderful hill in it, with a university on top and the first time I ran away from home, I ran up the hill and looked across the world: Kansas wheat fields and the Kaw River, and I wanted to go some place, too. I got a whipping for it.”

“O, let my land be a land where LibertyIs crowned with no false patriotic wreath,But opportunity is real, and life is free,Equality is in the air we breathe.”

“America is a dream.The poet says it was promises.The people say it is promises—that will come true.The people do not always say things out loud,Nor write them down on paper.The people often holdGreat thoughts in their deepest heartsAnd sometimes only blunderingly express them,Haltingly and stumbling say them,And faultily put them into practice.The people do not always understand each other.But there is, somewhere there,Always the trying to understand,And the trying to say,"You are a man. Together we are building our land.”

“Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain-- All, all the stretch of these great green states-- And make America again!”

“PeaceWe passed their graves:The dead men there,Winners or losers,Did not care.In the darkThey could not seeWho had gainedThe victory.”