QuoteProject
Poets are always making waves. I mean, you know, in an ideal situation, the ideal republic can't tolerate poets because - it isn't that they mutter and criticize; it is that the poet does not accept the situation called the 'perfect' condition of man - in other words, perfect in the materialistic sense.
Derek Walcott
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote suggests that poets challenge societal norms and notions of perfection by questioning materialistic ideals.

Derek Walcott's quote reflects the idea that poets have a unique role in society, functioning as critics of the status quo. In a so-called 'ideal' society, where materialism and a narrow definition of perfection prevail, poets are at risk of being marginalized because they express dissent and provoke deeper thought about the human condition. Their purpose transcends mere critique; they challenge the very definition of what it means to be 'perfect' by highlighting the complexities and imperfections inherent to humanity.

Themes

PoetsSocietyCritiquePerfectionHuman Condition

In practice

Example use cases

Use this quote in a speech about the role of art in societal critique.

More from Derek Walcott

I don't feel I've arrived home until I get on the beach. All my life, the theater of the sea has been a very strong thing.
Derek WalcottRead
Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
Derek WalcottRead
A long time ago, I thought, as a writer in the Caribbean, 'I don't ever want to have to write 'It was great in Paris.'' Because I don't think, proportionately speaking, that one's experience in a city as opposed to, say, a village in St. Lucia, is superior to the other.
Derek WalcottRead
My mother was a schoolteacher and very, very encouraging. She understood what it meant when I said I wanted to be a writer; both me and my brother wrote.
Derek WalcottRead
When I went to college - when I read Shakespeare or Dickens or Scott - I just felt that, as a citizen of England, a British citizen, this was as much my heritage as any schoolboy's. That is one of the things the Empire taught, that apart from citizenship, the synonymous inheritance of the citizenship was the literature.
Derek WalcottRead
The truest writers are those who see language not as a linguistic process but as a living element.
Derek WalcottRead

Similar quotes

Civilization largely consists in hiding human nature. When the barbarian learns to hide it we account him enlightened.
Mark TwainRead
Habit is a man's sole comfort. We dislike doing without even unpleasant things to which we have become accustomed.
Johann Wolfgang Von GoetheRead
Our human laws are but the copies, more or less imperfect, of the eternal laws, so far as we can read them.
James Anthony FroudeRead
...it is not only the general principles of justice that are infringed, or at least set aside, by the exclusion of women, merely as women, from any share in the representation; that exclusion is also repugnant to the particular principles of the British Constitution. It violates one of the oldest of our constitutional maxims...that taxation and representation should be co-extensive. Do not women pay taxes?
John Stuart MillRead
If this being is omnipotent, then every occurrence, including every human action, every human thought, and every human feeling and aspiration is also His work; how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being? In giving out punishment and rewards He would to a certain extent be passing judgment on Himself. How can this be combined with the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him?
Albert EinsteinRead
Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity -- an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.
Hubert H. HumphreyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.