Ezra Pound Quotations

Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

Science is unpoetic only to minds jaundiced with sentiment and romanticism . . . the great masters of the past boasted all they could of it and found it magical.

It would be about as easy for an American to become a Chinaman or a Hindoo as for him to acquire an Englishness or a Frenchness or a European-ness that is more than half skin deep.

Technique is the test of sincerity.

The primary pigment of poetry is the IMAGE.

In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality--the principle of order versus the split atom.

The man who fears war and squats opposing My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson But is fit only to rot in womanish peace

Go to the adolescent who are smothered in family-- Oh how hideous it is To see three generations of one house gathered together! It is like an old tree with shoots, And with some branches rotted and falling.

What counts is the cultural level