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The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.

Ezra Pound

A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
EZRA POUND

Answer Balance Civilization Serious Value
Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
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Ourselves Poetry Stars Willing
Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.
EZRA POUND

Debt Implement Loan Modern Old Slave Time War
Don’t be blinded by the theorists and a lying press.
EZRA POUND

Blind Lying Press Theory
What matters most is not the idea, but the capacity to believe in it completely.
EZRA POUND

Believe Capacity Complete Ideas
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
EZRA POUND

Education Insist Limit Reality
Good art however ‘immoral’ is wholly a thing of virtue. Good art can NOT be immoral. By good art I mean art that bears true witness, I mean the art that is most precise.
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Art Goodness Immoral Precise True Virtue
The serious artist must be as open as nature. Nature does not give all of herself in a paragraph. She is rugged and not set apart into discreet categories.
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Artist Category Herself Nature Paragraph Serious
Christ can very well stand as an heroic figure. The hero need not be of wisdom all compounded. Also he is not wholly to blame for the religion that’s been foisted on to him.
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Blame Hero Himself Religion Stand Wisdom
The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
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Energy Ideas Image
Man is an over-complicated organism. If he is doomed to extinction he will die out for want of simplicity.
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Complication Death Himself Man Organism
The what is so much more important than how.
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Important Reason
The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.
EZRA POUND

Artist Craft Interest Live Modern Violence
When words cease to cling close to things, kingdoms fall, empires wane and diminish.
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Close Diminish Empire Word
To say that a state cannot pursue its aims because there is no money, is like saying that an engineer cannot build roads, because there are no kilometers.
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Build Money Pursue State
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.
EZRA POUND

Finding Greatness Magic Master Mindset Romanticism Science
Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
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General Meet Statement Value
The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough.
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Black Crowd Face Wet
Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.
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Compare Deserve Forever Glossary Master Necessary Reading
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours Forever and forever and forever.
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Desire Dust Forever Myself Yourself
I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn’t irascible.
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Myself Racism Worth
In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.
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Curse Early Financial Ourselves Time
The natural object is always the adequate symbol.
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Adequate Natural One Liner Symbol
USURY is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon’s knife of Fascism can cut out of the life of the nations.
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Cancer Life World
Bureaucrats are a pox. They are supposed to be necessary. Certain chemicals in the body are supposed to be necessary to life, but cause death the moment they increase beyond a suitable limit.
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Body Chemicals Death Limitation Moments Necessary
Technique is the test of sincerity.
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Sincere Technique Test
The artist is the antenna of the race.
EZRA POUND

Artist One Liner Race

The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.

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The concept of genius as akin to madness has been carefully cultivated by the inferiority complex of the public.

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