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Quote by Robert Hass

“In California we froze property taxes, school size increased, test scores declined, and there was a massive middle-class white flight to private schools. We're turning into Victorian England at a very rapid rate.”

Quote by Robert Hass

Author

Robert Hass is an American poet known for his concise and profound poetry style. His works explore themes of nature, history, and the human condition, and have won numerous literary awards. more

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“Futurism today is led by science-fiction writers, by sociologists, by historians. Now, I have nothing against them. I'm sure they do great work. But they're not scientists. They're clueless.”

Today Fiction Scientist Science Fiction Historian Great Work Fiction Writers Clueless Sociologists Futurism

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“If we want to have a two-class society and an unemployed, welfare-crippled lower class that has no access to equality and educational opportunity and no access to jobs and is resentful and furiously angry, we can have it - that's what we've been willing to pay for so far.”

Ifs Want Two Jobs Opportunity Pay Class Willing Angry Educational Access Welfare Unemployed Crippled Resentful Lower Class

Author:Robert Hass

“There isn't a river or creek in the country - or there are very few - that doesn't have some small group of people working on a restoration or creek cleanup project. Let me give you one example that's a great metaphor: In Washington, D.C., there is a group called the Anacostia Watershed Society. Two rivers converge and define Washington - one which everybody knows about, the Potomac, and the Anacostia, which they don't. The Anacostia is one of the most polluted urban rivers in the country.”

People Knows Giving Two Country Groups Example Projects Rivers Let Me Metaphor Urban Restoration Small Groups Creeks Watersheds

Author:Robert Hass

“It turns out - this is a metaphor out of [Charles] Dickens - that the raw sewage emptied into the Anacostia comes from the Federal Triangle. I have a sewer map, and on it you can see the pipe from which congressional wastes empty into the river that then flows through the black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C. It is very expensive to do anything about the river, but somebody's working on it.”

Turns Black Waste Flow Rivers Empty Metaphor Expensive Neighborhood Maps Pipe Dickens Triangles Sewers Sewage

Author:Robert Hass

“If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.”

Ifs Responsible Watersheds Places You Live

Author:Robert Hass

“Once you figure out something about the watershed, you'll find out where the schools are going to hell, and the kids aren't learning, and there is no money. Social issues, class issues, and environmental issues were all connected.”

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Author:Robert Hass

“I am talking about poetry. It's like that line from [John] Yeats: I go back to "where all the ladders start/ In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."”

Heart Lines Talking Bones Shops Ladders Foul Rags Yeats

Author:Robert Hass

“If you're going to get up to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath you've got to figure out how you put people in possession of their heritage. To do that you have to talk about how they're being taught, and the imagination of community the people who are running our government have.”

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Author:Robert Hass

“There are instances: [Henry David] Thoreau read [John] Wordsworth, [John] Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and you got national parks. It took a century for this to happen, for artistic values to percolate down to where honoring the relation of people's imagination to the land, or beauty, or to wild things, was issued in legislation.”

People Happens Values Imagination Land Century Relation Instance Artistic Parks Legislation Teddy National Parks Wild Things Wordsworth David Thoreau

Author:Robert Hass

“I suppose there's something to be said for the sheer reinforcement of our beliefs, but really I think poetry is more useful as disenchantment than enchantment.”

Thinking Said Belief Poetry Is Sheer Enchantment Reinforcement Disenchantment

Author:Robert Hass