“We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them.”

— Walt Whitman, "The Spanish Element in Our Nationality" (1883)

About Walt Whitman

1819 – 1892

American poet and essayist who revised 'Leaves of Grass' across nearly four decades, celebrating democracy, the body and the self.

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

“Each moment and whatever happens thrills me with joy.”

“It is a beautiful truth that all men contain something of the artist in them.”

“The wisest man may be wiser to-day than he was yesterday, and to-morrow than he is to-day.”

“Give thyself time to learn something new and good, and cease to be whirled around.”

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

“The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.”

“It was subtle of God to learn Greek when he wished to become an author—and not to learn it better.”

“There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.”